NASA satellite image reveals massive oil spill

[seemslikeadream]

NASA satellite image reveals massive oil spill


A newly released NASA satellite image reveals oil leaking from the BP oil rig that sank after it exploded April 20, 2010. The explosion killed 11 workers.

The images, captured on April 25 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite and the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite, show a large oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. An estimated 42,000 gallons of oil are leaking per day into the Gulf.

NASA says its imagery of the affected region is being updated twice daily from the MODIS Rapid Response Team.

Emergency workers are attempting to control the spill.

The spill comes just weeks after a Chinese coal barge grounded on the Great Barrier Reef, causing damage to about two miles of coral reef, and shortly after President Barack Obama announced plans to open up new offshore drilling sites along the northern coast of Alaska, the Atlantic coast, and the Gulf of Mexico.






NASA image caption: In the top image, the Mississippi Delta is at image center, and the oil slick is a silvery swirl to the right. The oil slick may be particularly obvious because it is occurring in the sunglint area, where the mirror-like reflection of the Sun off the water gives the Gulf of Mexico a washed-out look. The close-up view shows waves on the water surface as well as ships, presumably involved in the clean up and control activities.

[DoYouEverWonder]

This sucks.

Maybe this will put a crimp in Obomba's plans to open up more of the US coast for offshore drilling but I doubt it will. Instead, it will give them an excuse to build more nuke plants. Makes you wonder if this rig was sabotaged?

[seemslikeadream]

Engineers focus on containment of oil as investigation of rig blast widens

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 27, 2010; 7:19 PM
Engineers struggled Tuesday to contain the oil seeping from the site of last week's offshore drilling rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, an incident that Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry said has the potential to "be one of the most significant spills in U.S. history."

Officials from BP, the company that leased the Deepwater Horizon before it sank, continued to explore new ways of activating a massive piece of equipment on the seafloor that is supposed to seal the well. Meanwhile, BP's top officials made the rounds in Washington to discuss responses to the incident.

The Obama administration also announced Tuesday that it was launching a full joint investigation into the cause of the explosion, which critically injured three workers and has left 11 missing. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed an order outlining the next steps for a probe that began April 21; their agencies can now issue subpoenas, hold public hearings and call witnesses.

In a statement, Salazar said that even as officials respond to the spill, they are "also aggressively and quickly investigating what happened and what can be done to prevent this type of incident in the future."

Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of BP's exploration and production unit, said Tuesday afternoon that his employees had in the past 24 hours found four new ways to try to seal off the well but that they had not determined whether any of the methods would work. "We will apply every resource to secure the well and limit the impact of the release of oil," he said, adding that BP was spending $6 million a day on the effort.

Federal officials are exploring an "in situ" burn to get rid of the oil in the water, Landry said. It is an approach with "benefits and trade-offs" because it can harm air quality but limit the spill's reach, she said.



Stan Senner, director of conservation science for the Ocean Conservancy, said that under certain circumstances, such a burn "probably is better than letting oil remain on the water" because it could prevent the oil from reaching Louisiana's barrier islands. "They're highly productive and sensitive places," Senner said of the marshes and wetlands, which help sustain marine life and many birds.

Meanwhile, BP chief executive Tony Hayward and other senior company officials met with several of President Obama's top deputies, including Napolitano and Salazar, about the cleanup efforts.

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) said that the incident has prompted authors of a Senate compromise bill on climate change to recheck provisions that would encourage offshore drilling, and that he hoped the administration would reassess its new offshore-drilling policy.

"You saw what just happened in the most sophisticated rig that we have," Cardin said. "It shows that this is a high-risk issue, and when the administration said they were protecting the most important shorelines of America, they were wrong."

Advocates for offshore drilling say the latest incident does not negate the need to expand domestic oil production.[/quote]

[seemslikeadream]

[http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=10490796]size=150]Homeland Security, Interior Investigate Oil Spill[/size][/url]
Homeland Security, Interior to investigate oil rig explosion in Gulf of Mexico


The Obama administration has launched a full investigation of last week's oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (neh-pahl-ih-TAN'-oh) and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar say they will devote every available resource to a comprehensive investigation of the explosion, which left 11 workers missing and presumed dead. The explosion also caused a massive oil spill off the Louisiana coast.


Salazar and Napolitano signed an order Tuesday establishing the next steps for a joint investigation that began last week into the causes of the explosion of the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf. The U.S. Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service share jurisdiction for the investigation.

Long-Term Effects Feared After Gulf of Mexico Oil Rig Explosion
David Byrd | Washington, DC 27 April 2010


Photo: NASA
NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of the Gulf of Mexico on 25 Apr 2010. With the Mississippi Delta on the left, the silvery swirling oil slick from the 20 Apr explosion and sinking of Deepwater Horizon drilling platform is highly visible

Oil from Sunken Rig Threatens Gulf of Mexico Shorelines
When the Transocean, Ltd. oil drilling rig exploded and sank off the coast of Louisiana last week, it set off a chain of events that could have long-term economic and environmental effects on several southern U.S. states. It also could affect President Barack Obama's plans to increase off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Deepwater Horizon drilling platform sat about 70 kilometers off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. Last week, for reasons that still are yet to been determined - the rig exploded and sank. Most workers escaped the rig, but 11 are missing and presumed dead.

Oil from the rig has been leaking ever since and covers some 4,800 square kilometers of the Gulf of Mexico.

AP
21 Apr 2010 aerial file photo in the Gulf of Mexico, shows the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burning
The sunken platform's owner, Geneva-based oil services company Transocean, Ltd., and its operator, London-based BP, have been trying to contain the spill so that it will not damage fisheries and beaches along the Gulf Coast.

Ron Rybarczyk is a spokesman for the Joint Information Center in Louisiana. He says cleanup crews are using remote controlled robots to try to activate a device called a blowout preventer some 1,500 meters below the surface. But so far, they do not know whether it is working.

"The remote operating vehicle is trying to activate fully that blowout preventer," he said. "We don't know if it is partially activated and engaged or not activated and engaged at all. But we are trying to get it fully engaged to prevent any more oil from coming out of that well head," said Rybarczyk.

The blowout preventer is a complex valve that looks like two fire hydrants stacked on top of one another. It can open and close well and it is considered critical to the safety of a rig and its crew. But oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico.

Crews also are applying chemicals to the oil slick to help it evaporate and disperse more quickly. But harsh weather has hampered efforts by skimmers and other vessels from reaching the site.

Doug Helton is with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

"Early on the weekend [of April 24-25], we had pretty severe weather with thunderstorms in the coastal waters and other severe weather that made it [difficult," said Helton] "We had to pull the response vessels off the water because it was too rough and too dangerous," he said.

The oil that is leaking is light sweet crude. It is almost like diesel fuel as opposed to thick, heavy crude.

Ron Rybarczyk says that most of the oil on the surface tends to be a very thin layer.

"If you can imagine putting a little bit of oil in a cup of water or a bathtub or when we see rainbow type sheen in a parking lot after a rain - it doesn't take much oil to cause a sheen that spreads a long way. So the fact that 97 percent of the surface area of this plume is sheen is a very positive thing," said Rybarczyk.

An oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could have a devastating impact on the shrimping and fishing industries in Louisiana and neighboring states.

John Sackton is editor and publisher of seafood.com, an industry news Web site. He says that if the oil reaches Louisiana's shrimp beds, it could have far-reaching economic consequences.

"The short-term effect is that it is not possible to fish for shrimp in waters that are polluted by oil," he said. "The oil gets into the product and also it fouls the nets. So any place where there is visible oil, they would have to shut down fishing. The second problem is a longer-term problem as to whether there is anything that is toxic in the water that is going to impact shrimp survival," said Sackton.

Doug Helton of NOAA says weather could drive the oil to fragile shrimp beds, but that it could also lessen its impact.

"Oil will move and spread with winds. So we are carefully tracking the winds and forecasting the winds so we can understand how that oil is going to move and spread," he said. "The weather also has the effect of helping to disburse and break up the oil. So strong winds and choppy seas are hard for cleanup operations, but they also help to disburse and break up the oil," Helton said.

One factor working to contain the spill is that the tube that stretched from the Deepwater Horizon to the ocean floor collapsed when the rig sank. The bends and kinks in the tube are slowing the flow of oil and giving cleanup crews more time to work.

BP has proposed lowering a large dome to capture the oil and then pumping it to the surface. There are also plans to drill a relief well nearby to reduce the pressure. But both plans could take several weeks to implement.

Louisiana recently opened some of its Gulf waters to shrimp fishing. Most of the shrimp season is later in the year. But with the industry earning more than $117 million in Louisiana alone last year, stopping the flow of oil before it reaches the coastline is critical.

[beeline]

Link

Coast Guard to set fire to oil leaking in the Gulf

By KEVIN McGILL, Associated Press Writer Kevin Mcgill, Associated Press Writer – 51 mins ago
NEW ORLEANS – The Coast Guard planned to set fire to oil leaking from the site of an exploded drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, a last-ditch effort to get rid of it before it reaches environmentally sensitive marshlands on the Lousiana coast.

Fire-resistant containment booms will be used to corral some of the thickest oil on the surface, which will then be ignited, said Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Prentice Danner.

It was unclear how large an area would be set aflame, what would used to do it and how far from shore the first fire would burn. The slick was about 20 miles east of the the mouth of the Mississippi River.

About 42,000 gallons of oil a day are leaking into the Gulf from the blown-out well where the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank last week. Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead. The cause of the explosion has not been determined.

A graphic posted by authorities fighting the slick shows it covering an area about 100 miles long and 45 miles across at its widest point. It could reach land within three days, depending on the weather.

State Widlife and Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham told a legislative committee Wednesday morning that National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration projections show a "high probability" oil could reach the Pass a Loutre wildlife management area Friday night, Breton Sound on Saturday and the Chandeleur Islands on Sunday.

The decision to burn some of the oil comes as the Coast Guard and industry clean-up crews run out of other options to get rid of it.

Crews operating submersible robots have been trying without success to activate a shutoff device that would halt the flow of oil on the seabottom 5,000 feet below.

Rig operator BP Plc. says work will begin as early as Thursday to drill a relief well to relieve pressure at the blow-out site, but that could take months.

Another option is a dome-like device to cover oil rising to the surface and pump it to container vessels, but that will take two weeks to put in place, BP said.

Winds and currents in the Gulf have helped crews in recent days as they try to contain the leak. The immediate threat to sandy beaches in coastal Alamaba and Mississippi has lessened. But the spill has moved steadily toward the mouth of the Mississippi River, home to hundreds of species of wildlife and near some rich oyster grounds.

The cost of disaster continues to rise and could easily top $1 billion.

Industry officials say replacting the Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean Ltd. and operated by BP, would cost up to $700 million. BP has said its costs for containing the spill are running at $6 million a day. The company said it will spend $100 million to drill the relief well. The Coast Guard has not yet reported its expenses.

___

Associated Press Writer Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge contributed to this report.

[seemslikeadream]

Oil Spill Estimates Raised Fivefold
Crews Aim to Mop Up Gulf Spill With Fire, a Technique Experts Laud But Which Has Never Been Applied So Widely

By ROBERT LEE HOTZ And ANGEL GONZALEZ

VENICE, La.—Coast Guard crews in the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday set fire to a portion of an oil slick spreading from a deepwater well, which the agency said was leaking at a much greater rate than previously believed.

Rear Adm. Mary Landry said that 5,000 barrels a day was now estimated to be leaking, five times the previous estimate of 1,000 barrels, after the agency found a significant new oil leak.

AFP/Getty Images
Ms. Landry said that she briefed President Barack Obama and that the government has offered the services of the Department of Defense to help contain the spill
The upgraded estimates, announced late Wednesday night, came after the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration studied aerial surveys of the oil's trajectory, Ms. Landry said.

Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for BP Exploration and Production, which leased the rig, said the location of the newly detected leak was just atop an automatic shutoff mechanism —known as a blowout preventer—that the company has been trying to activate since Sunday to shut off the well.

The spill is expected to strike the Louisiana coast before the end of the week, Mr. Suttles added.

Mr. Suttles suggested that the Coast Guard's 5,000-barrel estimate was not accurate. "We do not believe this changes the amount currently estimated to be released,'' Mr. Suttles said.

The burning technique conducted earlier in the day was deemed by experts to be the safest, cheapest way to limit environmental damage. But it has never been tried on this scale.

"Burning oil on the water is the most environmentally friendly technique that one can think of," said combustion expert Anil Kulkarni at Pennsylvania State University, who has studied the technique for the National Institutes of Standards and Technology.

The controlled oil fire at sea started Wednesday evening in a small area of the gulf spill and lasted for a little over an hour, said Coast Guard spokesman David Mosley.

Results of the test burn weren't immediately disclosed. These oil fires pose some problems. Smoke plumes from the burning oil are thick with soot. Typically, there are also traces of toxic sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide.

However these tend to dissipate quickly, say researchers who have studied the process, and the toxic oil compounds that might be most harmful to wildlife are consumed in the fire.

Experiments conducted by the Canadian government have shown that the chemical byproducts of oil burning appear to have little effect on marine species.


AFP/Getty Images
Satellite images Wednesday show the oil slick near the Louisiana coast, top, and ships at its edge, above.

Although the spill already covers an area about the size of Jamaica, crews can burn only a small portion at a time.

They have to corral a patch of oil with fireproof booms and then ignite it with a flare—a job made harder by wind and waves. To keep the burning oil contained, they then must tow the entire setup, so that the current keeps the burning oil floating between the booms.

"We are trying to light on fire wet oil in the middle of the ocean," said Chris Reddy, who studies oil spills as director of the Coastal Ocean Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

It already may be too late to incinerate the oldest portions of the spill, which has been growing from damaged well pipes 5,000 feet underwater since the Transocean rig Deepwater Horizon caught fire and sank last week.

As the oil spreads across the surface, it mixes with the water into an incombustible sludge with the consistency of mayonnaise. "The thinner it gets, the more difficult it is to burn and the more residue it leaves," Dr. Kulkarni said.

Researchers have experimented with the burning technique since it was first tried after the spill from the tanker Exxon Valdez in 1989, when about 715 barrels of crude were incinerated in Prince William Sound, Alaska. But it has never been tried at open sea on this scale, federal and academic oil-spill experts said.

Crews are also spreading thousands of gallons of chemical dispersants—usually detergents or alcohol-based solvents—to speed the rate at which the oil dissolves in seawater.

In Venice, a fishing and oil-field-services outpost at the southern tip of Louisiana that is the closest community to the oil spill, residents and local officials hoped that the controlled burning would help keep the crude away from the fragile ecosystem—and from valuable fisheries.

"If the oil reaches the shore it will kill all the shrimp, all the crabs and all the oysters," said Kim Vo, owner of the largest shrimp distributor in Venice, Sharkco Seafoods International. "I hope [the burning] is going to help, but I don't know if it's good for the shrimp."

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser was all for burning off the oncoming oil tide. "It's a lot easier to see that stuff dissipate in the air than in the marsh," where birds and fish can become trapped, he said.[/quote]

[82_28]

It was sabotaged by either nefarious human means or it was sabotaged by the Cosmos.

We got refinery explosions up here in WA.

Coal mine shit in WVA.

Announcing recently of offshore drilling. Yay homeboys!

The "Obama X" post I made. Offshore windmills was the drill accompanied by a Malcom X image.

It just goes on.

It makes no sense. Except the sense it makes to you.

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.thepoliticalcarnival.net/2010/04/halliburton-implicated-in-gulf-oil.html]Halliburton implicated in Gulf oil spill[/url]
By GottaLaff

Ellen Ratner of Talk Radio News Service is on the Thom Hartmann Show:

Ratner: BP will have to pay for everything. They'll get some Coast Guard help. The spill is "of national significance" (per Napolitano). It's an exploratory well, not a production well. And 11 people died.

Hartmann: I heard that the company that was pumping cement down into well to separate oil from gas, was Halliburton.

Ratner: Halliburton has a lot of very small companies that don't do business under the Halliburton name. So probably, it's a subsidiary of a subsidiary. Not easy to trace. Journalists are lazy, said a friend, and that's why it did not come up [paraphrased].

Hartmann: What was their role, why was it not being covered? If you Google it will come right up.

So much for that new "oil exploration" Obama is supporting... speaking of which (via an e-mail alert):

WASHINGTON (AP) Presidential assistant: Gulf oil spill could impact Obama's new offshore oil drilling plan.

Gee, ya think?

President Obama is on MSNBC discussing the Gulf oil leak:

SWAT teams are being sent to inspect all platforms and rigs. BP, administration are trying to determine cause. Napolitano to thoroughly investigate.

Via Booman:

And at the center of this ecological and economic disaster created when the oil rig owned by British Petroleum a/k/a BP Petroleum drilling in 5000 feet of water exploded, and which has taken the lives of at least 11 oil rig workers (that we know about) is a company with whom we are all too familiar: Halliburton or as most of us like to refer to it, former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney's retirement fund.
NEW ORLEANS - The widow of a crew member killed in last week's oil platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico has filed a lawsuit accusing the companies that operated the rig with negligence, court documents showed Tuesday.
The suit was filed by Natalie Roshto against Transocean Ltd, British Petroleum and Halliburton after the blast that killed her husband Shane, a seaman on the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig.

[smiths]

The Wall Street Journal reported that the oil well lacked a remote-control shutoff switch required by some other major producers, including Norway and Brazil. BP was at the forefront of recent lobbying of the US government against stronger safety controls for offshore drilling.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... k-us-coast

[chump]

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/04/29/lo ... index.html:

The oil well was ripped open by an April 20 explosion that sunk the drill rig Deepwater Horizon, leading to the presumed deaths of 11 men.

Drilling a relief well -- a second well drilled up to a mile or two away that would enter the leaking well at an angle to help plug it -- will take months, NOAA said.

Wednesday night, the Coast Guard and NOAA raised their estimate of the amount of oil the damaged well was pouring into the Gulf to 210,000 gallons a day -- about 5,000 barrels.

An effort to burn off part of the oil slick on Wednesday destroyed about 100 barrels, said Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of BP. But the technique "clearly worked," and larger burns are planned when weather conditions make them possible.

Suttles said crews have skimmed about 18,000 barrels of oily water from the surface and applied about 100,000 gallons of dispersant agents to break up the slick. But with the blowout preventer failing to respond, other options for shutting down the well could take weeks or months.

Ten wildlife refuges in Mississippi and Louisiana are in the oil's likely path, with the Pass-a-Loutre Wildlife Management Area at the tip of the Mississippi River likely to be the first affected, Jindal announced. Wildlife conservation groups said Thursday the oil could be a disaster for coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

"For birds, the timing could not be worse; they are breeding, nesting and especially vulnerable in many of the places where the oil could come ashore," said Melanie Driscoll, director of bird conservation for the Louisiana Coastal Initiative.

"The efforts to stop the oil before it reaches shore are heroic, but may not be enough. We have to hope for the best but prepare for the worst, including a true catastrophe for birds."

[seemslikeadream]

A Louisiana Heron flies above the fragile wetlands near the town of Venice, in the path of the oil spill that is creeping towards the coast of Louisiana on April 29, 2010. A giant oil slick threatened economic and environmental devastation as it closed in on Louisiana's vulnerable coast, prompting the US government to declare a national disaster. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency and called for urgent help to prevent fragile wetlands and vital fishing communities along the coast from pollution on a massive scale. The wind started to strengthen and blow the 600-square-mile (1,550-square-kilometer) slick directly onto the coast, where a rich variety of wildlife were at risk in the maze of marshes that amounts to 40 percent of the US wetlands.

Oil booms that were placed in preparation of the looming oil spill from last week's collapse and oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig are strewn along the shoreline by choppy seas in Port Eads, La. on Thursday, April 29, 2010

Gulf's Dark Oil "Stains"
Photograph by Chris Graythen, Getty Images

Dark splotches dot the thin sheen of oil seen on the Gulf's surface near New Orleans on Wednesday. Models show that oil escaping from damaged pipes on the seafloor may take three hours to rise the 5,000 feet (1,524 meters) to the water's surface, said NOAA incident operations coordinator Helton.

Because oil is buoyant, scientists expect anything that leaks from the pipes to come to the surface. But how fast the oil moves depends on the size of the globules that form. Under the enormous pressure of deep water, small globs rise more slowly than large ones.

The unprecedented nature of the Deepwater Horizon spill makes predicting its behavior difficult. Members of the federal-industry joint response team said they were not immediately aware of another oil spill in the past resulting from a breach so far underwater. (See "Rig Explosion Shows Risks in Key Oil Frontier.")

Published April 29, 2010

Gulf Oil Colors
Photograph by Chris Graythen, Getty Images

Both the size and color of the oil slick on the water's surface are indicators of how much oil has actually flowed into the Gulf of Mexico so far, said Doug Helton, incident operations coordinator for NOAA.

A silver-grey sheen or rainbow color, as seen in the above picture taken Wednesday, indicates a thin sheet of oil—perhaps only a molecule wide, he said. Authorities have said that the majority of oil seen on the surface of the Gulf—well over 90 percent—is spread out into such a thin layer. (See a picture of the silvery oil spill taken by a NASA satellite.)

But dark black patches indicate that thick pools of oil lie beneath—as much as five barrels-worth of oil per acre (0.4 hectare) in the darkest areas. The extent of dark patches seen in the Gulf led NOAA observers to believe that previous flow estimates were too conservative, Helton said. The size of the spill now covers several thousand square miles.

Published April 29, 2010

Gulf Oil Spill Worsens
Photograph by Chris Graythen, Getty Images

A boat makes its way through crude oil on the water's surface on Wednesday, about a week after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank into the Gulf of Mexico. Even now authorities can only guess at the size of the spill, because the ongoing leak is deep underwater.

Most large oil spills in history stemmed from tanker accidents, and their sizes could be reckoned based on the holding capacity of the wrecked vessels.

Oil company BP, which owns the leaking well, provided the original estimate of a thousand barrels a day, based on underwater cameras that recorded the flow from leaks 5,000 feet (1,524 meters) below water. (See oil rig pictures.)

But the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, which has also been monitoring the disaster on the scene and from the air, now says evidence points to the spill being five times worse—about 5,000 barrels a day. BP says it has identified a potentially new leak in the damaged pipes on the sea floor, which it had not seen before.

—Marianne Lavelle

Published April 29, 2010

Gulf Oil Spill's Spread
Image by DigitalGlobe via Getty Images

A satellite picture taken Monday captures a small plane flying over rust-colored "streamers" of crude oil visible on the surface of the Gulf.

Although thin layers mean less oil, the extent of the spread makes it more difficult for authorities to execute one of their planned strategies for containing the spill—controlled burns of the oil. (Related: "Oil Slick May Be Burned to Help Stop U.S. Rig Spill.")

Burning will work only when the oil can be gathered into a certain thickness in long, tubelike, fireproof booms. Although tests have shown such burning can remove 50 to 90 percent of the oil that can be collected in this manner, it's not known if enough of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig spill can be rounded up at one time. (See a map of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.)

Published April 29, 2010

Oil Spill Nears the Coast
Image courtesy ESA

The European Space Agency's Envisat orbiter snapped this picture of the Gulf oil spill last Thursday, seen as a dark swirl not far from the Louisiana coast.

Winds from the south have been driving the oil spill closer to land all week. The federal-industry joint response team projects that the leading edge of the oil plume will reach the Mississippi River Delta and the barrier islands of Louisiana by Friday night.

The area includes the Delta National Wildlife Refuge, where lush, marshy vegetation provides a winter stopover for hundreds of thousands of migrating snow geese, coots, and ducks. The wetlands refuge is also home to numerous endangered species, including American alligators, brown pelicans, peregrine falcons, and piping plovers.

Wildlife protection officials are trying the strategy of "hazing," or using loud propane-fired cannons, to chase birds from the water's edge

.

Gulf's River of Oil
Photograph by Chris Graythen, Getty Images

A "river" of crude oil drifts across the Gulf's surface, as seen in an aerial picture taken Wednesday.

The weather has complicated efforts to fight the Gulf oil spill, noted members of the federal-industry joint task force. Choppy seas are making it difficult to deploy skimming vessels and to attempt controlled burns of the oil. More than 98,000 gallons (370,970 liters) of chemical dispersant have been dropped on the oil. The dispersant does not actually reduce the total amount of oil entering the environment, but changes the chemical and physical properties of the oil. This makes the oil more likely to mix into the water column than to contaminate the shoreline.

"If we don't secure this well, this could be one of the most significant oil spills in U.S. history," said Rear Adm. Mary Landry, commander of the Eighth U.S. Coast Guard District, who is leading the response effort. (Related blog: "Who's Still Spilling Oil in the Seas?")

Published April 29, 2010

[Hugo Farnsworth]

There are over 10,000 wells on over 3800 platforms that have been drilled in the GoM, nearly all without incident. From a statistical view, it is an enviable record, and in terms of safety and the degree of danger inherent in the process, probably without peer. I do not think that it is the industry that is responsible, but rather that 40 to 50 human beings, trapped on this thing with nothing but miles of ocean surrounding them, ensure their survival by working as safely as possible.

The Horizon fire occurred during one of the more safe operations while drilling a well--cementing the last casing string. Most hands are breathing a sigh of relief at this point. What happened is still unclear, but some things are obvious. The drilling fluid and cement was lost (known as "lost returns") to the rock formation(s), hydrostatic pressure control of the well was subsequently lost, and the sub-sea equipment designed as the last defense against such a thing happening failed to do its job.

There may be some fault, some liability on someone's part, but I wonder. I have witnessed a drilling supervisor flatly refuse to do something he was ordered to do by suits that he considered unsafe. He's out there, they are not.

People survived, and so the story of this disaster can be pieced together. One thing that bothers me is BP's claim they are spending $6 million a day to clean this up. That's a pittance for a disaster of this magnitude. Now it may be that they have marshaled all the equipment available at this point, but they were probably spending nearly that amount just drilling the well (the Horizon's day rate was $500,000). A relief well is the only way to stop this mess.

Just to demonstrate how tricky Mother Nature can be with this: http://home.versatel.nl/the_sims/rig/ensco51.htm In this blowout, the last casing string had been cemented (though not successfully, it is now known), and the crews were completing the wellhead when things went slowly, terribly wrong.

[justdrew]

There are over 10,000 wells on over 3800 platforms that have been drilled in the GoM, nearly all without incident. From a statistical view, it is an enviable record, and in terms of safety and the degree of danger inherent in the process, probably without peer. I do not think that it is the industry that is responsible, but rather that 40 to 50 human beings, trapped on this thing with nothing but miles of ocean surrounding them, ensure their survival by working as safely as possible.

The Horizon fire occurred during one of the more safe operations while drilling a well--cementing the last casing string. Most hands are breathing a sigh of relief at this point. What happened is still unclear, but some things are obvious. The drilling fluid and cement was lost (known as "lost returns") to the rock formation(s), hydrostatic pressure control of the well was subsequently lost, and the sub-sea equipment designed as the last defense against such a thing happening failed to do its job.

There may be some fault, some liability on someone's part, but I wonder. I have witnessed a drilling supervisor flatly refuse to do something he was ordered to do by suits that he considered unsafe. He's out there, they are not.

People survived, and so the story of this disaster can be pieced together. One thing that bothers me is BP's claim they are spending $6 million a day to clean this up. That's a pittance for a disaster of this magnitude. Now it may be that they have marshaled all the equipment available at this point, but they were probably spending nearly that amount just drilling the well (the Horizon's day rate was $500,000). A relief well is the only way to stop this mess.

Just to demonstrate how tricky Mother Nature can be with this: http://home.versatel.nl/the_sims/rig/ensco51.htm In this blowout, the last casing string had been cemented (though not successfully, it is now known), and the crews were completing the wellhead when things went slowly, terribly wrong.

Hugo, it sounds like you really know what you're talking about, so this is going to sound like a really dumb question, but I can't be the only one wondering...

Why can't they just drop a giant iron sphere into the hole? Or cap it with a concrete dome... or something like that?

[Hugo Farnsworth]

Hugo, it sounds like you really know what you're talking about, so this is going to sound like a really dumb question, but I can't be the only one wondering...

Why can't they just drop a giant iron sphere into the hole? Or cap it with a concrete dome... or something like that?

Well, there are tons of structural steel (5000 feet of tubing inside of 5000 feet of pipe inside of 5000 feet of yet bigger pipe, etc.) all knotted up on the sea floor and the equipment that failed as well. It's a mess down there. There is no "hole" in the ground, per se, there is what is known as a well head. I had read that someone had proposed putting a big steel dome over it, but I have serious doubts this would work. If the formation blowing out is 18000 feet deep, that would be a minimum pressure of over 8000 (rough guesstimate) psi to deal with.

The only sure-fire way to deal with this is to drill a relief well. They would drill another well (directionally) whose bottom will be located right next to this one and they kill it by pumping very heavy cement into it at very high pressure. What BP is praying for now (and this happens quite often, TG) is that the well now blowing out "bridges over", i.e., it collapses and plugs itself.

[justdrew]

sounds like a big bomb would have cleared the seafloor around the well quickly, and maybe have cause it to "bridge over" - either way, then drop the giant iron ball on it. well, an iron sphere filled with gravel and sand would work too.

I think something like that needs to be done urgently...

considering...
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=28046&start=0