Offshore oil drilling is safe?

IcedEcliptic

It was in my previous link... http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/21/gul...ill/index.html

mgb_phys

Currently only a rumor (http://adropofrain.net/2010/05/rumor...efore-blowout/)

But I have been on sites in the US where I have refused to go underground and I know people who work for Schlumberger and their company would definitely walk off a contract if there was any safety violation.

turbo

This doesn't pass the straight-face test. Can you come up with a viable citation that claims that the static head of the oil in the pipeline is negligible and that minimal pump capacity is required to extract the oil? I'd love to see it.

turbo

Interesting. We'll see (when people are under oath months from now, perhaps) what happened. It would be refreshing to see a contractor walk off a job if they were unable to enforce a stop-work order due to unsafe conditions.

In my experience, Halliburton does not share that quality. I've been on pulp mill/paper mill shutdowns with them and was NOT impressed. Quick and dirty.

tiresmokindad

Yes Indeed. I agree that these will be a bad effect!

Ivan Seeking

The sickening videos and photos of heavy oil saturating critical marshes, wetlands, and beaches, are beginning to emerge.


http://www.vancouversun.com/news/soa...732/story.html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/01/lou...ill/index.html

This is a video taken during a flyover of the spill. We can only hope the narrator is being overly pessimistic.

IcedEcliptic

Hell, imagine what a tornado could do... lift a ton of the stuff and spray it everywhere. A hurricane would be even worse.

magpies

Isn't that what is going to happen with this oil spill come storm season?

IcedEcliptic

It would seem likely, but there is no certain way to predict that.

Ivan Seeking

Oil from algae is just vegetable oil. It is non-toxic. You can drink it. And it degrades readily. Also, without a significant source of nitrogen and the proper temps, the algae won't survive in open water - that is, it wouldn't exist as a giant plume that kills everything else. If you have these conditions, you would already have an algae bloom, in most cases.

You would certainly have a lot of fish food!

Also, you wouldn't have millions and millions of gallons of oil leaking endlessly. You could only spill the oil that has been processed. The rest is still trapped in the algae.

Please continue the algae discussion here
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=211274

Ivan Seeking

That is what worries me the most. All of these containment efforts will be useless if a siginficant storm hits the area. Hurricane season starts in one week. The water temps off the coast of NW Africa, the local hurricane nursery, are warmer than normal.

IIRC, when we see an ocean temp of 82 degrees F up through the Carribean, that's when the hurricane engine turns on. I'm not 100% sure of the number [maybe 81 degrees F], but it is surprisingly well defined.

turbo

Well, you have still not provided any information (even poorly-reviewed) about how oil from deep-sea wells magically rises to the surface, and how the production rates of existing wells can be used to limit the theoretical maximum outflow of a damaged well-head. I don't want to characterize another forum member as cheerleading for multinational corporations, but you seem to have moved beyond that to baton-twirling. Please link some peer-reviewed studies that show that the potential blow-out rate of a drilling-rig such as this can be characterized or constrained by the production rates of wells in nearby environs.

If the Deepwater Horizon spill can reasonably be constrained (in volumetrics) by the production rates of other wells in the same area, please show some evidence.

RonL

A link that will provide a simple and basic bit of info on oil and gas.

http://www.geomore.com/index.html



http://www.geomore.com/Oil%20and%20G...20Pressure.htm
http://www.geomore.com/Oil%20and%20Gas%20Traps.htm

It seems logical that the gas expands and pulls the oil upward on it's rise to the surface, also the oil is in it's own rights, a floating material.

turbo

Thanks, RonL. You have made my point quite well. Drill a hole into a pressurized deposit of oil and gas and fail to check it, and the flow rates can be quite spectacular. It is disingenuous in the extreme to cite the production rates of wells that have been in production for some time, and claim that their production rates set upper limits on the possible magnitude of this spill. They do not.

magpies

So has anyone figured out how big the field is yet? Is it still putting out oil like it was when they first showed video of it?

mheslep

I did - from a quote in a mainstream newspaper as a source. You ignored it as a conflict of interest, disingenuous on their part, etc.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/7011584.html

turbo

You ignore the inconvenient fact that the flow gushing out of a broken well (highly pressurized in this case, as the videos demonstrate) is in no way comparable to the production rate of a well that has been properly controlled and has been in production for some time. The fact that the petroleum company engineers' "assessment" was printed in a paper in no way elevates their claim to fact. The comparison is sheer propaganda and damage-control on the part of industry. BP could have allowed the Woods Hole team on-site to assess the spill a month ago. They have chosen to remain secretive, so their "assessments" are necessarily suspect.