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The broken oil pipes of the sunken Deepwater Horizon are pouring 70,000 barrels of oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico daily, according to a scientist who analyzed the video of the pipe released by BP. At 42 gallons per barrel, that’s 2.9 million gallons of oil every day, or the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez every four days.
But sophisticated scientific analysis of seafloor video made available Wednesday by the oil company BP shows that the true figure is closer to 70,000 barrels a day, NPR’s Richard Harris reports.
That means the oil spilling into the Gulf has already far exceeded the equivalent of the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker accident in Alaska, which spilled at least 250,000 barrels of oil.
The analysis was conducted by Steve Werely, an associate professor at Purdue University, using a technique called particle image velocimetry. Harris tells Michele Norris that the method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent. That means the flow could range between 56,000 barrels a day and 84,000 barrels a day.
This new estimate is far higher than the 210,000 gallons estimated by the NOAA and Coast Guard, a figure released early on in the disaster. Behind closed doors yesterday, oil executives privately told members of Congress that they feared the leak could release up to 60,000 barrels daily.
Unfortunately, an analysis of BP’s own video by show the oil executives’ estimate is a conservative one. One analysis suggested the disaster could leak as much as 100,000 barrels a day, or 4.2 million gallons.
But hey, It’s just a tiny part of the ocean. Nothing to see here, move along people.
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It’s all over now Baby Blue
One of my all time fav Zimmerman tunes.
Van Morrison and THEM tore it up, as have newgrassers Seldom Scene, and many others.
“The sky, too, is falling, over youuuuuuuuu . . . . . “
Thanks Michael, great read despite the tragedy and disaster.
Very early on, some few days after this started, Oil Drum dot com and TruthSky dot com both had either estimates in posts, or in comments, by those in the know . . . they were arguing that the 5K Barrels reported by BP was a like, it was more like 25K Barrels . . . roughly a million gallons a day from day one.
The info above DOUBLES that scenerio!!!!
And with all that oil, how much gas is also escaping from the gusher in The Tiber Field, which is estimated to have about half as much gas as oil (6 Billion Barrels of oil estimate, at 30K feet below the ocean floor, pressure!)?
Because if half of that amount of 2.9 MILLION Gallons of oil spewing daily, is also GAS spewing at that rate, I gotta believe that methane in that amount is phreaking poisonous to the region (see linkys earlier today regarding shrimpers being sick in the Gulf).
The damage being done is likely not even close to being analyzed or estimated considering gas spewage.
As more time passes, this just has to get worse and worse, impact wise, over wider and wider areas.
ugh. that can’t even be measured well, right? there’s also apparently a rogue underwater oil cloud somewhere in the gulf, below the surface. this will be horrible.
hm well that’s a whole lot different than the “200,000/day” they fed us for 2 weeks, now isn’t it?
The 210,000 gallon per day figure officially quoted by BP is just as “fed to us” as this latest figure from a single academician.
Certainly, BP is not inviting any experts that I am aware of to work with them, at the spill site, and closely determine through multiple different measurement techniques (the real way to make a good determination) an openly verifiable and reviewable figure for the leak rate.
But I wouldn’t hang my hat on anyone’s estimate right now, especially when the three estimates we have at this point visible in mass media cannot be rectified against each other.
that’s legitimate, although, based on the footage we’ve all seen, i’d rather place my bets on more pessimistic estimates.
I’ve expected BP from Day One to be reporting a low figure. This is because, on Day One, they did. They reported a figure well beneath 210,000 barrels per day when they first announced the leaking. BP is a scoundrel and we can expect them to be less then forthcoming now that they are in real serious trouble.
Conversely, mass media right will eagerly accept any large number that any figure with some sort of standing cares to announce. Sensationalism is the mass media’s business.
Nope, not in certain issues involving multinationals and our government.
You need to revise that thought train, IMHO.
Is it possible this thing could be much much much worse than we’ve been told by our corporate overlords and their captive regulators? How could that be?
There’s a slashdot thread giving a worst case scenario that mentions the Yellowstone caldera comparison, which has a worst case of possibility of Earth extinction. The guy who wrote it is mostly joking. Mostly.
…… http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/05/13/1953208/Gulf-Gusher-Venting-a-Million-BarrelsDay
~~~link fixed~~~
The idea of a cloud, or tube, or funnel of oil floating beneath the surface waiting to float up anywhere might attract Hollywood’s interest, I suppose. But they’d better hurry while there are still living creatures in the area.
that’s problematic.
Thats insane every boat putting up oil booms can drop a can with a string at periodic intervals at different points drop the can 30 feet pull up see if you have oil drop the can 70, 100, 150 feet etc add some lead weights so the can drops faster.
This is not rocket science.
For deeper readings the robot subs can certainly collect water samples.
I am not at all ready yet to believe this estimate anymore than I am ready to believe the other single academician’s estimate available through skytruth.org.
Before we go believing in these flow rate estimates:
1) Let’s realize that media is ready to broadcast a sensational multi-million-barrel per day figure because that is dramatic and media craves the dramatic.
2) There are now three separate estimates – one from BP, one from the single Florida academic, and now this latest figure from another single academic. None of these estimates has been rectified against the other two, all vary wildly from each other, all are based on improvised, ad hoc measurement processes cobbled together reactively.
3) This latest estimate is being done against a single secondhand video.
I am waiting for more confirmation before I go with any of these numbers.
That nobody knows nor it seems is really trying to figure out is the real problem. This is Obama’s Katrina that so much time has gone by without any oversight by the government.
It’s time to bring in the Military to oversee everything BP is doing and get some independent analysis as to how bad this flow really is or maybe this is BP’s masterplan to just have a Gulf Sea of Oil and all they have to do is just suck up the oil like water. No need for a drill rig and regulators.
I’ve been thinking for a while, and now saying, that the Coast Guard is shilling for these SOB’s.
And the only person who can stop that is sitting in the Oval Office.
Think he’ll do it?
And; let’s see how long it takes these numbers to get into the MSM.
Gotta agree that Coast Guard and Obama are all in for BP/TO/Hallybutt.
Gotta say I don’t believe their numbers a bit.
I’ll side with the two academics, anytime.
We’ll get better accuracy at some point, but you look at all that aerial footage, read blogs with comments from shrimpers/fishers from LA, watch a few vids . . . . there’s a LOT of oil that’s gushed out . . . we can SEE that and flow rates CAN be calculated from it . . . and given that shrimpers and fishing folks are talking about being sick at sea, there’s a LOT of gas leaking, too.
Good to see you again, hoss!!!
“Let’s realize that media is ready to broadcast a sensational multi-million barrel a day figure…”
The bloody hell they are. They’ve been low-balling the shit out of it since it happened. BP and the Coast Guard were spoon-feeding the bullshit to them and they sucked it up and spewed it out to us like it was their mother’s milk.
I don’t believe there is a media conspiracy or tendency (either) to under-report the volume of oil being leaked. That would be the same as a media conspiracy or tendency to under-report the scope of the disaster. I think that mass media is hungry for a disaster, because sensational disasters draw media consumers who can be sold to advertisers. Mass media news is always looking for a story to sell, a compelling narrative.
Again, let’s see if we can see any independent confirmation of any of three leak rate figures now in front of us.
Furthermore, as I’ve tried to make clear in diary entries, the spill rate is important but not the point. 210,000 gallons per day is creating a spill that is washing up tarballs a hundred miles away and we are only beginning to see the impacts on the environment and economy. Despite the already clear disaster, our public officials are advancing “climate change” legislation that still increases offshore oil drilling. 210,000 gallons per day is enough of a spill to show us how utterly corrupt our national political leadership really is.
Hoss, you are completely and blindingly ignoring the bought and sold ROCK SOLID relationships between MSM, Big Oil, our bought and paid for government.
Your ‘if it bleeds it leads’ to sell ad dollars was a fine analogy in the past. But nowadays, when it comes to circling the wagons, and killing the truth, the selling of ad dollars takes HUGE back seat to toeing the corporate/fascist line.
Your media analysis, I fear, is a bit too old school, and I say this only because that’s been my field of occupation in the past, my field of education . . . . and I keep up somewhat with analysis of media trends and such.
The MSM does what it’s TOLD to do, while still muckracking for ad dollars. But SOME issues are off limits, when they involve global multinationals and our bought and corrupted government.
You’ve been one of a handful of folks in this disaster from day one that’s brought info to us all, and want to thank you vociferously for your work and time to share it all with us lay people.
I guess, the media thang is just a quibble I have . . . ;-)
Agreed, both on appreciating the posts you’ve been making and also feeling you’re underestimating by a lot how much MSM is bought and paid for.
Seconded BP buys tv ad time.
Yeah, even my local Sacto rag, and the tv stations are using the lo ball number.
Media is NOT sensationalizing this shit at all, publishing and conveying only the ‘company lines’ fed to them.
Checking out Truthsky dot com, Oil Drum dot com, and an assortment of other links FDL Pups and main pagers have posted and you’ll piece together a completely different picture of what the bought and paid for MSM is spouting.
They ain’t sensationalizing shit.
;-)
The consensus estimate over at the Oil Drum appears to be 20k-30k barrels a day. The gusher is from a well that has been cased but not fractured*, and it’s flowing through a partially closed BOP and leaking out through a pipe with significant kinking. 50k a day for a producing well in the same field is for a fully fractured well flowing through a fully open pipe; you would expect it to flow faster, not slower. It’s not clear to me how Werely did his calculations — I am particularly interested to know how he estimated the volume of gas and water entrained with the oil.
*A well that’s cased in the production zone generally has holes knocked in the sides and into the rock in order to permit the oil to flow into the well more easily.
I don’t think any of these numbers are true. But I think it’s important to encourage discussion and research by providing some sunlight and publicity for those who develop them.
We may not know for years.
Absolutely! BP must not have the only voice. BP is a colossally reckless, greedy, exploitative malignant corporate tumor and they should be facing fines and costs that put them in the red for years over this even as they are not allowed a single new lease or charter for offshore drilling ever, ever, ever again. Their entire executive management should be fired and only allowed work cleaning up oil-impacted marshlands with primitive hand tools for what they’ve done.
… from prison work-release.
A question: Did BP release the clip of the gusher?
Yes – that is the first video in the embed above.
There have been 3 clips I’ve seen now . . . if BP released them voluntarily?
Hmmm . . . . I wouldn’t trust the clips then, as being from The Gulf. Could be from Venezuela or North Sea for all we know I guess . . . . . in which case analysis of them is a bit weakened if the clips are suspect.
But I trust much of what I’ve read at Oil Drum dot com . . . and as others say, a flow rate of about 25K Barrels, a MILLION GALLONS A DAY, of oil is likely at LEAST close. But the gas escaping with it? How much methane is getting out, from Tiber Field, which is said to hold 6 Billion Barrels of oil, and half that much gas, too?
“We may not know for years.”
Which is just the attitude that the culprits would like for us to have.
“We need more research before we make the call…like, maybe, 10 years down the road.”
Also: “I don’t think any of these numbers are true.”
Okay, Teddy, can you tell us who you THINK has the biggest vested interest in low-balling the numbers?
Perhaps I was unclear.
I encourage discussion and estimates. But I think the actual amount being spilled is irrelevant. It’s an ecological disaster like none we’ve ever seen, perhaps even greater than Hiroshima/Nagasaki or Chernobyl. Focus on the spillage volume itself isn’t getting drilling stopped or America off our addiction.
i think that’s a really important point to make. these numbers are distracting at best.
when they start reporting the large numbers of dead animals that wash ashore, the profound health problems people will develop in coastal communities, and the number of gulf-dependent businesses that collapse as a result of this, it wont matter how much oil there is.
This is and has been my point exactly. The damage done here is ultimately not measurable in terms of gallons of oil. Certainly we should know how many gallons of oil are released – but the damage is measured in terms of environmental and economic destruction.
Sad to agree with you here.
I don’t think the actual numbers will mean much to the general public. Too abstract. 5000bbl/day, 15000, 350000, all get blurred together. Besides, the TV media methodology requires some widespread macro fauna damage and telegenic human tragedy.
The potential offshore damage is so terrible as to become numbing, but as long as the oil is offshore this disaster will be under-appreciated.
You’re too US-centric in your thinking. This is a long way from being as bad as PEMEX’s IXTOC I blowout back in 1979, which was also in the GoM. In particular, BP has been much faster in their spill response than PEMEX was.
And the environmental destruction from Chernobyl has been grossly overstated. In particular, the exclusion zone is one of the best nature preserves in Europe. It’s home to the largest remaining population of European Bison and important habitat for a number of other severely endangered species. While the local animals and plants are unusually radioactive, they are otherwise normal.
Now THAT is some gallows humor!
Reminds me of the Simpsons episodes featuring the three-eyed fish.
The animals in the Chernobyl exclusion zone live ordinary lifespans, reproduce successfully, and have normal offspring. In most ways, it’s in better ecological shape today than it was the day before the accident.
The Belarus and Ukraine humans who immigrated to Colorado beg to disagree with you.
There are jokes in this community:
“Look at this blue milk? What can we do with it?”
“Make cheese and call it French!”
Current scientific observation trumps anecdata any day.
Thanks Kelly, I won’t go into details, but Chernobyl as I understand it was as devastating as any overblown accounts describe it. I’m on yer page with this one.
Feel free to move to Chernobyl. For my part, I will continue to regard Chernobyl as a quintessential example of the terrible risks of nuclear power.
I agree with your view on nuke-power. We have our own mini Chernobyl here in NM, it’s called Church Rock.
Quite a while back, in a large city in the USA, I attended a Grand Rounds lecture by Dr. Robert Gale -who treated a lot of Chernobyl victims- and he noted that there were doubtless bits of Chernobyl radioactivity in the auditorium air. Yum.
That said, I’m far away from that site and I like it that way.
Chernobyl Decay and Deformed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvAJ_u3Q0Hw
“But I think the actual amount being spilled is irrelevant.”
I beg to differ. First and foremost, it’s not a “spill”. It’s not in a container of known capacity that’s leaking, and when a finite amount “spills” out, the “spill” will stop spilling. It’s a gusher, and no one knows how much will come out, nor, when it will stop.
As to the amount going into the GOM being “irrelevant”: When we were at 5,000 gallons a day, that was nothing but 5 good-sized fuel tanks being emptied into a still-relatively pristine ecosystem. Not good, but manageable. Then, it went up to 42,000 gallons a day (as which point Mr. Centrist retreated from his stay-the-catastrophe statement about this not making him reconsider his earlier decision to open up new coastal areas for drilling, and he began to use the phrase “on hold” in some of his pronouncements about new offshore wells.) and then the gusher somehow jumped to 200,000 gallons a day.
Now, we have what looks like pretty good science and math being used (coming from people who won’t make a dime off the evidence they’re offering) to make the case that a hell of a lot more oil is going into the GOM than either BP or the Coast Guard and NOAA were admitting.
If you think this progression is irrelevant, then I feel like I’m discussing geography with someone who thinks the earth just may be flat, but we need more evidence to make the call.
It’s true that it’s a catastrophe, but if we want to do something about it we need to keep track of the bullshit that’s being “spilled” by the people who are making such great profits from the lunacy of drilling two miles into the earth’s crust under a mile of water, and we need to make them eat that bullshit.
This isn’t rocket science: if you cop to what a disaster it is; and it IS, then it doesn’t make a lot of sense to ignore Big Oil’s effort to use numbers to cover their asses.
You are purposefully picking a fight with someone who agrees with you.
Why?
Dear Teddy, if you think that I agree with anyone who says, in any context, that the amount of oil being gushed into the GOM is “irrelevant”, then you need to brush up on your cognitive skills.
That you also instantly dismissed the higher numbers for the extent of the oil flow, and then said, in what would surely bring a smile to the face of any member of the Board of Directors of BP, that “we may not know for years” the amount, puts us squarely on opposite sides in these important points, and I would appreciate it if you would not make general statements about us being in agreement. Thanks, tb. :o)
As for you, Pierce, you can take the opinions of the people who are involved in this industry for gospel until you’re blue in the face, and I’m thinking that you’re not going to get a lot of cred in this debate. I would much rather listen to some independent scientists who are not part and parcel of the oil industry.
BTW, if you think that BP and the rest of the petro-pimps who have been low-ballling this since it happened, are the equivalent of the people who are yowling about it and pointing out that the bullshit-laden information which BP and their defenders have released, are somehow equivalent, then I think that the “end of the world” crew, as you tar us, can rest our case about you being an apologist and fellow traveller for BP and their ilk.
Teddy, we ain’t gonna solve those things now even if we DON’T focus on gush rates, potential size of what COULD be released (field size) . . . those issues are gonna take years to hash out, regardless of the disaster.
However, the worse this disaster is measured to be and proven to be, and the more damage to the planet if causes, COULD easily trigger a ‘paniced response’ that WOULD change shit faster.
So, I’ll argue, the more we know about gush rates, volume of shit released (oil AND gas) and the amount DOWN THERE that CAN get out, well, that just might easily move this disaster along from public mind to real action by our government, regardless what the fucking multinationals dictate, or buy off.
It’s good to be alert. America needs lerts. It needs flow rates, volumes released, and potential for worst case release numbers.
Liability isues, are at stake here.
Lo balled numbers are crucial for the game being played.
Big Oil has paid out big bucks to everyone on the planet for their indemnity.
*G*
Two things. First, in terms of the politics, the spills are almost always estimated on the low side. It damps down public outrage. Think how the public would have been reacting if they had been told that 60,000-70,000 bbls/day were spilling into the Gulf. Now if people have any idea at all it is more likely to be the 5,000 figure which they have internalized. Second, I was wondering if anybody was going to do this kind of calculation from the moment I saw the pictures of the leak. All you need to know is the bore of the pipe and a way to calculate the velocity of the oil exiting it either via an external reference or from the known size of the pipe.
The math is actually very easy. If for example just to keep things simple the radius of the pipe is 1 foot then a cross section would have an area of pi r^2 or 3.14 sq. feet. If oil is exiting the pipe at say 3 feet a second then in one second a volume of 3.14 X 3 or 9.42 cubic feet of oil has leaked. From this you can compare the volume to the volume of a barrel of oil. You can refine the calculations taking into variables like temperature and an estimate of the ratio of oil to water in the mixture leaking. Even ballparking it though, you can quickly work out that the 5,000 bbl number is BS and that is apparently what happened.
Flow rate through a shell is a undergraduate math problem in principle but the problem is more complex when you have only a single video clip of a pipe over a very brief period of time in the uncontrolled, barely accessible environment of the sea floor under 5,000 feet of water.
If this newer, higher figure is correct, then we should see independent confirmation soon from across the entire range of academic and industry experts. I ask at least that we look for real independent confirmation.
And, again, the Florida academic who has been for 2 weeks broadcasting a million-gallon-per-day figure claims he has a strong measurement technique, too. But his number is very different than either of the two.
Knowing the real number involves having a real sense of confidence as to why two different measurements made by seeming experts have two entirely different results. This is a normal way of thinking about measurement.
The two academics were measuring different variables, hoss, hence different numbers.
Academic #1 measured maps, aerial photo, sat images . . .
Academic #2 measured what’s supposedly, a flow visible at the disaster site.
I can see different numbers coming from that. Easily.
And I’d put my money on pipe flow rate analysis.
Final determinant is gonna be . . . what’s visible or measurable thru out The Gulf.
I mean, even at 200K barrels a day, how much fucking surfactant would BP have to dump and pump to hold that oil underwater? Not to mention CorexIt has NO impact on methane gas that I’ve read.
What’s my point? Visible surface evidence . . . if there IS a minimum of 1 million gallons a day of OIL gushing, how much fucking chemical shit (deadly to sea life) would they have had to pump to hold that shit underwater where it can’t be readily seen? THAT’S some depressing thought train . .
So, where’s the oil, regardless of the gush rate, where is it?
Does the visible evidence correspond to lo numbers, or med numbers, or hi numbers of gush rate?
What’s the rate and volume of gas being sent out?
What damage is it doing, that’s unreported?
Or unmeasured, yet?
As this continues, and there’s 6 BILLION barrels of oil and half that of gas in Tiber, what’s the damage to The Gulf, us, to the oceans, and the planet if HALF that gets out?
I gots LOTS of questions . . . . ;-)
Even if the well ran to natural exhaustion, it wouldn’t release nearly that much. In order to get out into the gulf, the oil has to flow out of the rock and into the well bore. The oil occupies relatively small pores in the rock; it’s more like a sponge full of oil than a tank full of oil. Any given well can only drain a relatively small proportion of a given reservoir — that’s why developed fields have hundreds or thousands of wells in them.
Pierce, what are you going to say, if a a month from now, we’re at the same level of gush?
I mean, you’re low-balling the thing all to hell and gone, when it’s already a disaster, and there has been not the slightest indication that it’s going to be stopped.
Would you like to give us your considered opinion on when “natural Exhaustion” might occur?
Tanbark, it’s obvious you haven’t done the smallest amount of serious research on the subject. I’ll take the considered opinions of the actual petroleum geologists and engineers posting on the Oil Drum and other places on what the well might actually be capable of flowing over what’s really a BOTE estimate based on a 30 second snippet of footage. There’s too many variables in play to make a good estimate based on the release footage. 5k bbl/day is certainly a very low estimate (and not, btw, anyone’s official number anymore, whatever the MSM is reporting), but 70k bbl/day is likewise a very high estimate.
And as for how I know the whole field won’t come out? Because oil companies don’t produce a whole field from a single well. They certainly would if they could — drilling wells is very expensive even on dry land and they’re profit-driven entities. The sand in the oil eventually blocks the pores through which the oil flows to the well and then the flow stops. This can take a very long time and would release a catastrophic amount of oil if it was allowed to happen, but pretending that significant fraction of the entire field can flow into the GoM through a single well is mindless disasturbating.
Now yer quoting Oil Drum, which contradicts all the BP and MSM and our government is spewing regarding false info regarding spewage, gushage, damage?
Wow, yer Rove controlled, ain’t ya!
Cuz only Karl Rove could have spun a piece of shit like you just did on Tanbark that was so full of holes even surface pressure PSI would explode it.
Nice bend, false, and well . . . you need some new talking points, methinks.
Tell Karl I said howdy. And yer handlers, too . . . *G*
Nah, it’s all corp based propaganda he’s gushin.
*G*
Dude, yer blowing smoke up my skirt!!!
This shit’s at 30K feet underground.
You know the PSI involved at that depth?
Yep, enough to force any drop left in Tiber to ooze up thru the drill site disaster like an infected puss laden sore on a human skin’s body.
Yer message is killin me, and I don’t mind sayin so . . .
*G*
Who you writing for? Government? BP? Industry efforts? Lawyers?
Yer shillin for SOMETHING all status quo corporate fascist, I’m here to tell ya.
*G*
I love it when you go all geeky . . . even if I don’t get the math and science.
But yeah, I’d think we’d have good numbers of estimated gushing by now, for oil AND gas . . .
It’s the gas that’s starting to worry me . . . in the ocean and in the air . . . . I guess, it ALL has to rise, but what it kills on its rise and what it does to the atmosphere should be of grave concern, I don’t see much play on it.
As I recall, it was 5,000 gallons a day before the platform sank, tearing the pipe off close to the wellhead. At that point, BP and the Coast Guard were claiming 42,000 gallons a day, and now, by their numbers, it’s gone up to 200,000 gallons a day. Why the increase?
Anyone with two synapses to rub together knows that they were and are frantic to keep the bad news to a minimum, no matter what the real truth is. If any of the low-ballers on here want to make an argument in their defense, by all means, start your engines, gentlemen.
Good call, they’re easing up the numbers but still low balling by a factor of a bizillion, or so. ;-)
Just a correction, Michael.
the leak could release up to 60,000 gallons daily.
This should be 60,000 barrels, I think.
fixed, thank you
When you estimate you guess with the best facts but when your guess is 210,00 and your off by more than a million gallons actual number 2.9 million gallons then your not estimating, guessing etc your pulling numbers out of your ass you have no facts to estimate with or your lying.
Enron accounting!
So…does anyone have the conversion math to compare this to say, the Ixtoc spill in 1979?
Ixtoc 1 poured oil for nearly year, ultimately releasing 140,000,000 gallons of oil into Gulf. Assuming a constant rate of 3 million gallons per day Ixtoc 1 would be surpassed the Horizon leak in less than a month and a half.
Given that Ixtoc 1 was a flowing blowout for a year, whereas the Horizon leaks are just that, leaks from pipe ruptures, we might imagine the 3 million gallon per day rate to be fairly high as an estimate.
Nope, the GUSHERS are close to the well head, they are flowing rock and sediment with the gushing, and gas, and that’s gonna erode more piping and what ever composes what the well head is now.
There’s 6 BILLION BARRELS of oil, half that volume of gas, down at about 30K Ft, under PSI’s that make yer head spin.
Tell me you can’t do some simple conjectures and ask yer self, what happens if only HALF that gets out?
If we can’t stop the flow, or prevent it from INCREASING! What if it ALL gets out? I mean, at 30K, no matter WHAT the volume that’s displaced in Tiber Field, the rest of it’s all gonna wanna escape from the depth PSI alone!
So, if the gushing ain’t stopped, it’s likely it all comes out!
And because, incompetency and technology that were NOT suitable for the task at hand that CREATED this disaster are certainly not gonna phreakin FIX it, are they, we could be really, really screwed, nationally, and likely planet wise.
Epic. Wise.
*G*
Sand and rock in the flow cut both ways — they can cut metal, but they can also plug the pores in the rock feeding the gusher and even the bore itself. Plus there’s all sorts of solids that can precipitate out of the oil as the pressure falls during its trip from the bottom of the well up to the sea floor and block the well bore, either partially or completely. The physics of such flows is … complex. Anyone making a solid prediction of what it’s likely to do in the next month is full of shit.
But it is certain that no one well can drain an entire field, or even a large fraction of one. Tiber is a *HUGE* field… if it were to be fully produced, it would have hundreds of wells in it… perhaps more. Do you really think they’d drill that many holes if they could drain the whole field off a single well?
There’s a pipe (with all it’s acroutements).
The rock pores and the Tiber Field are at 30K feet below, with incredible PSI.
The rock pores are fucking OOOZINGGGGG pressure, to divest themselves of that oil and gas.
And we tapped into that pressure, and provided an outlet.
What part of that are you tryin to bullshit me on?
The 30K foot claim is from a single witness, and there hasn’t been any additional data to back up his claims. Until there’s some corroborating evidence, you can’t take that number as a given.
And it turns out to be pretty easy for a debris or dissolved solids coming out of solution to block a shockingly large hole even at very high pressures and flow rates — much higher than your intuition would tell you was possible. Check out http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6458 for some discussion on it as it pertains specifically to petroleum.
IXTOC I flowed somewhere in the neighborhood of 10k to 20k bbl/day. It also took ten months to cap.
Based on the new numbers how long before the entire oil deposit leaks out? How much oil before the election?
as far as i can tell, they dont even know how much oil is down there
The Macondo Prospect is thought to have tens of millions of barrels of oil (hundreds of millions of gallons) and is effectively bottomless as far as the three month scope for intervention wells is concerned.
The Tiber Field HAS been estimated, guessed, and researched.
3-6 Billion Barrels of oil, half that for gas.
The incredible link that hlrose@34 offered, suggest it’s MUCH larger than that, but does not suggest how that estimate is arrived at (trillions of barrels). The link author there also compared the Tiber Field to the size of The Gulf, which I don’t think is any part of any reality I know of so far.
So, I love the link and it’s info, but some of it is um, skeptical at best (as in trillions, as in size of Gulf).
Course, BP and the industry, if they HAVE a field that big, wouldn’t they squelch that info for such a huge find?
And isn’t The Gulf where that astroid/meteor hit long ago, killing the dinosaurs. Did that disaster FORM the gulf?
I don’t know.
But so far, I think there’s a LOT of oil and gas in the Tiber Field, from a number of sources, including Wiki, Oil Drum, TruthSky, and more.
And if HALF that shit gets out? Gotta fuck up The Gulf, maybe the oceans.
Maybe the planet, combo of oil and gas release? Imagine the poles melting? Artic permafrost releasing methane that’s been held frozen?
Publicly traded oil companies don’t usually lowball the size of their finds, since their stock price (and therefore executive pay) depend on the size of their reserves. They tend to claim as much as they think they can get away with given the geological data on hand without attracting shareholder lawsuits.
Why do you think that a significant fraction of the entire field could flow into the GoM through a single well, even if completely uncontrolled?
Um…
Someone needs to take a look at this (via slashdot (Yeah, I’m a geek))
Ok, THAT link goes into a Hall Of Fame of this disaster, along with Oil Drum and TruthSky.
I’m not done reading it all even . . .
That’s a great pick hoss . . . or hossette.
Would you diary that, and add some thoughts of your own, with more info, if so inclined?
Me, I think it’s huge, and worthy of a diary . . .
Thanks again for sharing that one.
How much will the gas as Larue points out effect global warming? How much will the dead ocean plants not absorbing CO2 effect global warming?
The original article from Wall Street Journal which I put into one of my earlier diary entries on the matter. The oil well will dump oil until the interventions wells (if successful) plug the well or some sort of more near-term intervention technique is successful.
Seymour @47; intervention wells don’t plug the original well; they bleed of the flow from the existing well and pipe it to the surface.
Exactly how that works, I don’t know. I can’t see how the tech exists to break into the old casing at that depth. Do they put down new wells which are somewhat adjacent to the gushing wellhead, to try to bleed the field down? Given that they’re talking about it taking weeks to get the new well functioning (if they’re successful) it sounds like they’re just planning on putting down some new wells.
I think that at this point, it’s a given that opportunities abound for making things worse, which should be enough to bring any more of this insanity to a screeching halt, even from a preznint who is clearly in the pocket of Big Oil.
That is an incorrect description. The relief wells allow the original well to be plugged with drilling mud and cement. And the well case is just concrete and steel — with the right bit, not all that much harder to drill than hard rock.
You are as wrong as two left feet. Every description I’ve read of the plan for a well to intercept the old one has clearly spoken of doing it in order to divert the escaping oil and bring it to the surface, instead of having it erupting out of the broken wellhead.
Even if your version of the intervention well was correct accurately hitting the old casing and getting a good enough seal to allow enough mud and cement to be injected into it to stop it, against the kind of pressure and outflow that we’re seeing in that clip, and at that depth, is going to be a miracle of engineering, if it succeeds.
That’s because you aren’t reading specialist sources. Try the Oil Drum for better data.
I’m all over OIl Drum dot com since I think, um, SF, or librty, or someone in THIS thread introduced it,’
That introduction, who ever it was we ALL owe a big ass hat tip to.
So, THANKS! *G*
As to your predication? Versus what Tan said?
I don’t think so.
Who you writing for, hoss?
Rove? Cheney? BP?
You’ve just basically taken a side that suggests yer a corp shill, all the way . . . comment by comment, it unravels.
Sorry if I’m harsh, but it sure seems that way.
Can you assuage my seemingly’s?
*G*
You’ve been reading tOD for a day? Aren’t you special — I’ve been reading it since 2007. Plus I have a number of friends in that business as engineers or geologists and am myself a mechanical engineer.
You think I’m a corporate shill just because I won’t swallow absurd end of the world disaster scenarios any more than I’ll swallow BP’s lowballing? Is that your standard? You aren’t entitled to the benefit of the doubt on your estimates any more than BP is.
There’s strong evidence already that the management and onsite engineering personnel of all three major companies involved (BP, Transocean, and Halliburton) are guilty of their own separate acts of gross negligence that contributed to this accident, and the investigation has just begun. There are likely a number of people from each company who deserve to go to jail over this, but I will reserve judgement on who they are until more information is available.
1) The present technology failed in the first drill (that exceed gov specs and went some 30K feet down, PRESSURES!)
2) To repeat what happened in the FIRST place, is insane. Gas will flow, rise, and blow fucking something. Again.
3) Your analysis of trying to drill into present well is likely correct. From all I’ve read.
Just like BGR hoss! Good timehs!!!
*G*
Hurricane season starts 1 June.
I’m no climatologist, but doesn’t the Gulf Stream churn around Florida, up the East Coast, across the Atlantic, down the coast of Europe and Africa, then back across the Atlantic in a relatively short period of time?
That’s one of the things we’re worried about. This sludge hits the Gulf Stream there’s hell to pay.
This is one of those “no one could have foreseen” moments, because how could that oil slick not hit the Gulf Stream?
The slick from IXTOC I did not hit the Gulf Stream, and it flowed through the teeth of a hurricane season. Why do you believe that this spill will?
I’m truly not trying to be difficult, but the answer to your question is that no one has said a word about it, and in the public discourse the unaddressed probable disaster is mere months from manifesting as unaddressed history; cf: “We will be greeted as liberators.”
This accident is, unfortunately, not unprecedented. While this accident will obviously not unfold precisely as IXTOC I did, it’s a reasonable yardstick for judging the likely effects of this one. In particular, claims that this will be much worse need to be justified, not merely asserted.
Google kos gulf stream there is a great video showing the currents and spill overlaid but it stops at 5/8/’10 It’s heading right towards the Gulf stream like water down a tub drain.
We will pass the Ixtoc spill in 37 days and approach 4.5 million barrels by the time they try the first cut off well. If it takes nine months, like Ixtoc we will blow out over a 1/2 billion gallons @ 50,000 barrels per day.
BP is with holding the RCV films so we can’t do a day to day comparison.
Is the flow increasing? Is the hole scouring out ? Did Ixtoc scour out?
BP only concern is to maximize profits and minimize losses not shut it down ASAP
Bingo, Rob! You put your finger on one hell of a wild card in BP’s game of Liar’s Poker.
The big Cape Verde storms don’t usually make the trek across the Atlantic until later in the summer. That’s the good news. On the other hand, there are usually a few smaller systems that crank up in the Gulf, itself, in the early part of the season…and if BP tries to do a hurry-up “fix” on this with new platforms out there, and we get an 85 mph Class I storm, then maybe we aint seen nuthin’, yet.
Last I heard there have been 5 dolphins found washed ashore. Air breathers, they have to swim up through the sludge. What more can I say?
Dragon @ 57; I think there is a concerted effort to suppress as much evidence of well-lubricated wildlife as possible, and I think that, at the least, the state Government of Louisiana is in on it. They are, after all, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Oil.
They’ve banned visitors to the Louisiana barrier islands which are now beginning to be affected by the oil slick, on the pretext of disturbing the bird rookeries there, at the same time, they’re dumping thousands of sandbags around some of the islands. If the noise of boats running back and forth close to those islands doesn’t upset the nesting birds, I don’t see how people running small boats close enough to the islands to document dead and dying birds from this disaster, will do it.
I expect that we’ll soon hear from a few decent whistle-blowing BP employees about their being threatened with immediate firing if they take any photos of the disaster, especially, oil-covered wildlife.
Gas. They hit the surface, oil don’t kill them, the air does.
Gas.
Starting to wonder whether the BP boardroom might be full of End-Times Armageddon fanboy types.
I thought it was obvious.
Where are the films from the Navy?
Controlled by corporate investments.
Simple answers.
Next . . . ;-)
So now I guess we’re down to sticking some of Sarah Palin’s bendy-straws in the leak and trying to suck the oil to the surface?
Googling around, they ARE talking about something called a “junk shot”, which is trying to inject shredded tires, golf balls, and knotted rope, into the broken wellhead, to try to plug it.
But I stand by what I said; in every earlier article I’ve seen there was no talk about putting down a new well to try to break into the old casing to plug it; those articles talked about wells to interdict and capture the oil before it got to the broken wellhead, and pipe it to the surface.
Thanks, Larue. :o)
Gonna be hell of a summer, and a run-up to the mid-terms, huh?
You still here? Know it’s late there . . and yeah, gonna be a hell of a run up hoss.
We gotta get you back on the main page here at FDL . . .
Your voice is missing . . . and if they let ME back in . . . ROTFLMAO!!!
At some point, in order to provide the data to tighten up some of these flow rate estimates, can’t the POTUS ask BP to cough up the videos?
Or do we have to send a Navy/CG/rival-oil-company ROV down there to stick some instrumentation into the flow and measure directly?
Larue, you’re all over it. Good on you. :o)
Good point about how those clips could come from anywhere. Also, we needed a basic adversarial relationship between our government regulators and these assholes. Instead, as everyone knows, Mr. Centrist is continuing with the BushCo prostate-gland tongue-massaging of corporate amurka.
As always: *G*
If BP is tossing out numbers then it is appropriate to check their math (and their past reported claims about meeting safety plan requirements).
79653 gallons of oil paint covers the surface area of 1 sq mile.
Not sure if oil sheen is the same thickness.
If close, and we knew how many square miles the sheen covered at a certain time, it could be measured again 24 hours later then subtracted to ball park the daily output.
No doubt, BP is counting the loss to the ounce, by the second.
Ghot DAMN that’s some genius bean counting!!!
*clapsfromstandingonchair*
Here’s something to speculate about: what will be Mexico’s response when the tides shift in the summertime and bring the ‘flow/column/whatever to their shores?
(see my comment above)
Forgot to mention that the surface area of rhe sheen could be calculated with daily aerial photography flights (photogrammetry).
there are often exceptions to the conventional wisdom.
until you see the schlumberger logs of the payzones, you know nothing about this reservoir. funny how no one talks about that evidence.
one of the issues that i have found undiscussed has been the fracturing of payzones so as to establish production viability.
did that occur?
wouldn’t you like to see the entire log of this hole?
i sure would.
at the depths this hole reached, the hydrocarbons from the bottom would be gaseos[methane, et alia], not liquids[i.e., not crude oil].
but, schlumberger shaped charges into intermediate and shallower payzones would have opened up crude flows which would have then been propelled by the higher pressure methane from deeper in the hole.
that is what is really happening, don’t you know.
and everyone in the oil patch who knows anything knows it.
this well is a gasser wild well, with crude payzones dispersing their hydrocarbons into that high pressure gas jet.
i think that everyone with a brain in this industry recognizes that this hole is beyond controlling. and that it will not be self-extinguishing.
it’s why bp management was on the platform doing the high fives. they thought that they had punched a hole into one of these high pressure methane reservoirs with intermediate crude zones that was going to make BP millions[billions] of profits.
so sad that unlike ahab, they escaped.
OK, wait!
This is a diary, Albert. Write it up.
Start here.
Yeah, that was quite bitchen . . . I want more.
Definitions of terms, laymans talk . . . a diary.
But yeah, that was something I’ve not heard ANYWHERE!!!
Yep. With lots of detail.
AIUI, they had not fractured the well and weren’t planning to — that’s for the production platform to do. It’s casing, whatever concrete that actually managed to stick, and whatever cracks in the rock were caused by drilling itself, all the way to the bottom.
~~~Gentlemen, if you can’t keep it about issues, take it outside, please.~~~
Ok.
well, you haven’t seen the logs.
so you don’t know anything about this hole.
there are things done these days that were never done in the past.
i think that multiple payzones were evaluated. and that could only be done by some pretty sophisticated logging.
it has been many years for me, but do you know how payzones downhole are evaluated these days?
many years ago, schlumberger dropped shaped charges down exporatory wells so as to perforate sands, so as to establish a payzone production assessment.
the purpose was to identify the productivity of the entirety of the reservoir.
some payzones had a production rate that negated future production from that zone at current crude pricing. it could be cemented in for re-opening upon a price that would justify production from that zone.
other zones downhole might be more prolific and justify current production.
that is one of the issues that gets missed, i think. how a reservoir is not a one-dimensional structure.
and even more to the point, we really don’t know what the cost of production from such payzones in a well are. the economics of hydrocarbon extraction are well hidden.
for an example, let us consider the relatively shallow wells punched in the powder river basin’s coal bed methane. at a price of $4.00 per thousand cubic feet, one might think that the extraction from this structure would be uneconomical.
funny, i know an operator in that field that says that they can make a profit with methane at a henry price of $2.00 per thousand.
which returns me to the point, what are the economics of hydrocarbon extraction?
Here’s the new plan of the day, from BP:
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20100514/D9FMJQB80.html