The White House has began saying that this oil spill is now considered to be the worst in history. Here is a few things they are not telling us.
This is from an email I received from someone in the know, I have been corresponding with this guy for a few years now and he rarely gets things wrong.
I suppose I should also tell you that just like me, this man is very religious and believes this is part of the end of days but nevertheless he is a very smart man and knows exactly what he’s talking about.
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“Imagine a pipe 5 feet wide spewing crude oil like a fire hose from what could be the planets’ largest, high-pressure oil and gas reserve. With the best technology available to man, the Deepwater Horizon rig popped a hole into that reserve and was overwhelmed. If this isn’t contained, it could poison all the oceans of the world.
“Well if you say the fire hose has a 70,000 psi pump on the other end yes! No comparison here. The volume out rises geometrically with pressure. Its a squares function. Two times the pressure is 4 times the push. The Alaska pipeline is 4 feet in diameter and pushes with a lot less pressure. This situation in the Gulf of Mexico is stunning dangerous.”
I really do think that the situation is getting further and further out of hand.
By yesterday morning, the nature of the crude had changed, indicating that the spill was collapsing the rock structures. How much I cannot say. If it is collapsing the rock structures, the least that can be said is that the rock is fragmenting and blowing up the tube with the oil. With that going on you have a high pressure abrasive sand blaster working on the kinks in the pipe eroding it causing the very real risk of increasing the leaks.
More than that is the very real risk of causing the casing to become unstable and literally blowing it up the well bringing the hole to totally open condition. Another risk arises because according to reports the crew was cementing the exterior of the casing when this happens. As a result, the well, if this was not properly completed, could begin to blow outside the casing. Another possible scenario is a sea floor collapse.”
If we can’t cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?
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And this is why it happened….
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/05/did-porn-cause-the-oil-spill-in-the-gulf/57234/
Boadicea's Chariot 
I stuffed the link, here it is again
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/05/did-porn-cause-the-oil-spill-in-the-gulf/57234/
Howzit IS
I don’t care!
Couldn’t care less.
Got that?
BP are an embarrassment to all people in the oil industry, we make oil from coal down here, I’m happy with that.
(I’m actually enjoying watching the ‘superpowers’ of world trade (BA) get there comeuppance)
Soutie – I’m with you in believing they had it coming but I do enjoy a can of Tuna every now and then, they keep this up I might have to change to river salmon and I hate the stuff 😦
What about my Friday night Fish and chips? I like to taste fish, not motor oil 😦
What bothers me is that Obama called off inspection and enforcement of known problems at said oil wells and now is resorting to xenophobic hysteria to divert attention from his own ineptness. At least BP is taking responsibility.
I’m disappointed in Obama, he has proven himself to be inept at handling a disaster of this magnitude, not much difference between Obama with this and Bush with Hurricane Katrina. He has done nothing except whinge and demand reports that will take weeks or months to complete, by then it might be too late.
Just in case I’m sticking with chiko rolls and chicken nuggets, no more fish and chips for a while at least 😦
IS: there is, actually, a difference. Bush could not simply send the federal government in — he had to have permission from both the governor of the state and the mayor of the city. In Mississippi, which was actually harder hit than Louisiana, the governor and the mayor of the major city on the coast, Biloxi, both granted immediate permission and arranged further assistance from the Red Cross. The governess of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans both refused to give the federal government permission to intervene until it was too late. That is why Mississippi managed to pick up much, much faster — even if the damage was vastly greater there. The governors of the coast states have all given permission to the federal government to intervene and did so before the oil hit shore — Obama bungled it.
“Obama bungled it.” YES, HE DID 😦
Cuckoo, cuckoo.
I’m reliably informed that in LA these days, when you order a cocktail, the waiter will as if you want it, leaded or unleaded. 🙂
Let us to pray, IS.
It is our only hope!
Sod the prayer, nuke it!
So, according to myself, Bravo22, Tocino, Araminta and Christina, what we need is ….
A Nuclear prayer that goes off like a Cuckoo, cuckoo clock and runs on unleaded fuel and fills the oil pipe full of chicken nuggets? 😦
PS – There is no machine made by mankind that will beat a pressure of 70,000 psi. a top kill will not work, BP knows this and they are saying so along quiet corridors. it’s why their shares have dived by up to a quarter of their value. They are stuffed.
A nuclear bomb would be the worst idea ever, it would be like throwing a grenade against a barrel of fuel, ie, a fire bomb. the explosion would most likely crack a fissure in the rock strata and release “all” the oil in the reservoir.
There is only one solution that would work, shove four or five smaller pipes inside the leaking tube as far down as possible, the pressure would remain the same but it would be spread between the four or five pipes, then they could do a top kill in each individual pipe but only after filling the gaps between the pipes.
Off course, every pipe could also have a valve built into it so as to shut off the oil flow.
I run a simulation on it and it works.
IS, have your lawyers/negotiators had a word with BP yet? Your invention must be worth a quid or two. :0
Janus – I already contacted the white house, they are sending me a dozen chicken nuggets as a reward, also they said the will give me an all expenses paid holiday to a place called Guantanamo 🙂
seriously though, I did contact them over it, it is a good idea and has plenty of merit, better than what they have attempted so far. it’s like a shoving a bunch of straws into a bubbling bottle of champagne, the pressure is equally shared between all of them but is less in each straw.
Dire isn’t it? Porn, corruption, criminal negligence. This has it all. Shame it’s real and not a movie.
Failure of the plan could compound the problems facing BP by destroying the valve and potentially unleashing an even bigger torrent of raw crude into the sea.
Not so much a rescue plan as a recipe for further disaster. Great idea.
Dire isn’t it? Porn, corruption, criminal negligence. This has it all. Shame it’s real and not a movie.
Failure of the plan could compound the problems facing BP by destroying the valve and potentially unleashing an even bigger torrent of raw crude into the sea.
Not so much a rescue plan as a recipe for further disaster. Great.
Janh1 – Worst of all is that nobody dares to mention the deep current that flows “out off” the gulf, this current which is heavy with salinity helps to send warm water towards the north where it is cooled by the arctic waters.
Never mind the Florida and other American coastlines, what do you think happens to an ice cube when it is coated with oil? If they don’t stop the oil flow you guys in the Northern Hemisphere are going to have a very warm and permanent summer. 😦
IS: One pipe or a hundred the PRESSURE will be the same in each. Engineering 101.
Leave it to the pro’s this is no place for amateurs, politicians or religion.
Bravo: Your number 9, right on the mark.
Low wattage – Really? I think you best stick with Bernoulli and the pressure applied on liquids by gravity, frankly it is you who has no idea. But why should I argue with you, after all I only consulted Physics professors from the University of Wollongong, I guess you know more than them.
There is only one solution that would work, shove four or five smaller pipes inside the leaking tube as far down as possible, the “pressure would remain the same” but it would be spread between the four or five pipes, then they could do a top kill in each individual pipe but only after filling the gaps between the pipes.
By the way, the man who is very religious, works for NASA and with the help of his father helped to send men to the Moon, I guess he’s just an ignorant Catholic 🙂
Mind you, I did get this wrong ….”but is less in each straw.” but I was only chatting with Janus, it was the best explanation possible so as not too make it to complex 🙂
IS, right! Polymaths like you owe it to mere mortals like me to be accurate. Disgraceful lapse. 😮
Out of every disaster, there must be something good in it’s wake. I mean to say, if Myt wasn’t off line the chances are you wouldn’t be posting here? 🙂
Janus – I am so sorry I never posted the entire book of calculus in order to make you understand. 😦 Lucky for me Sciencebod never comes to this site, he might have called me an amateur or something, I’d never live it down. 🙂
Tocino – Check my blogs, I have been posting here for sometime, Bearsy asked me to be the comedy relief guy, now go on, have a laugh and that way I can earn my pay. 🙂
Ha, ha, ha.
Oh, dear. This view is not worth the climb.
Low Wattage – I doubt where you have enough mountain climbing experience anyway, but don’t feel too bad about reading so quickly that you failed to understand, it happens. 🙂
That’s OK IS, you know what they say, “When ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise”
Just a question, if the rate of flow in the riser is constant and you introduce pipes of smaller diameter, wouldn’t the venturi effect mean that the pressure in the smaller diameter pipes will be less great because the flow would be faster?
I gather the loop current is in eddy mode at the moment too, the oil is more likely to end up in the western area of the Gulf of Mexico not going out into the Atlantic to join the N Atlantic Drift. This is both good and bad news, good that it will not as yet be wrecking the Atlantic seaboard, bad news because the area it will contaminate is an incredibly rich breeding ground for many fish and marine mammals, a total ecological disaster.
It is now doubtful that it will touch florida at all, but very bad news for Louisiana and Texas.
Bravo22 – A very good question,
just imagine that you shove five pipes in but leave them open, the middle pipe however must be kept shorter than all the others, ie, it does not reach as far down as all the others, “the flow would continue uninterrupted”
Then they could use the middle pipe to pump heavy mud so that it blocks the gaps between all the pipes plus itself, this would work because the flow and thus most of the pressure would be taken up by all the other pipes, lets not quibble about how much mud, we’ll just say a lot.
Then they would drop cement all around the place (and all around the pipes)so as to shut off any possible leaks between the pipes or around them
then, they could simply shut off the other pipes, one by one slowly, but one or two would need to be left open so as to not stem the flow completely, else the pressure would be enormous. The pipes that are left open could then be used to continue pumping oil to the surface for a while or (while waiting for the cement to set) they could be shut off as they think fit.
Now, I am not a teacher, I have never been to good a explaining things but surely anyone can see that this idea has to work.
If you don’t think it would work, by all means say so, but don’t call me an amateur, more that 20 uni professors have looked at it and they all say it has more merit than any other idea put forward so far.
Christina – Thank god for a clear scientific mind to argue with, good to hear from you, I wish I knew more about ocean currents, I was having a chat with a few people about it and nobody seems to be too sure about what will happen. 🙂
PS – What is it about New Orleans? It always cops the worst of everything 😦
According to BP, The Top Kill operation will involve pumping mud at high pressure into the so-called blowout preventer – a valve on the sea bed through which the leaking oil is traveling into the riser.
BP, which has said that operation has a 60 to 70 per cent chance of success, has 50,000 barrels of mud on a surface vessel called the Q4000.
It will be pumped at pressures of up to 30,000 hydraulic horsepower into the well.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7136969.ece
But the pressure coming out of the pipe is over 70,000 PSI, how many of you think this will work? 😦
Fluid Power in Horsepower = (Pressure (PSI) x Flow (GPM)) / 1714
http://www.eskridgeinc.com/support/formulas.html
Why New Orleans cops it, goes thus-
The Mississippi delta was built over millions of years of sediments washed down and depositing themselves in an ever growing fan out to sea, deposited in the spring floods and eroded by the hurricanes and winter storms, a stability had been reached, nature both gave and took so to speak.
Then, 100 years ago or so man thinks he knows better and starts dredging to deepen the channel so ever larger ships can get in and upriver as far as Baton Rouge. Plus, to make matters worse allow gravel and sand dredging for industry at the mouth of the delta. This cause both instability allowing more erosion and a gradual recession of the delta banks and the ceasement of replenishing silts to the mangrove swamps and wetlands along the coast. Effectively now New Orleans is much nearer the open Gulf than it used to be. Previously hurricanes and storms and huge waves that used to dissipate their energy on the outer banks of the delta are now able to take out their energy on the city and its defences directly. Hence the levees do not just take the rising of passive water but thrusting currents instead, of course they can’t cope!
To make matters worse the original town was built on a couple of marginally elevated sand islands, they never flooded and still don’t, however the city expanded and the rest of the place is below sea level anyway! Obviously the lowest land was the cheapest and attracted the poorest housing that attracted the poorest people, ie the blacks. Which is why so many of the black people were victims of Katrina and not the whites who lived on dry land. Also they had the least personal resources to get themselves out of town before the denoument!
What they need to do is STOP dredging and let the river repair itself!
So how did “experts” allow this all to happen, do you reckon Christina? Substantial financial interests overriding the evidence of science yet again?
One of the points that came out of Coast (the UK TV programme taking a close look at the British coastline) was how much flood defences in one area have denuded and destroyed beaches and natural environments in other areas. One would think experts could predict the consequences of change fairly accurately these days – but even if they do, it is obviously not heeded!