Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico - Historic Disaster

[TheEnemy]

Personally I feel that instead of penalizing all of the oil companies they need to just go after BP and Transocian.

Since they we know they cut corners shut down all of their wells until they get inspected and any deficiencies repaired.

That way there is a very noticable difference in profit between cutting corners and doing things right, and it shouldn't have as much effect on fuel prices in the long run. Just a short term bump.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by TheEnemy

Personally I feel that instead of penalizing all of the oil companies they need to just go after BP and Transocian.

Since they we know they cut corners shut down all of their wells until they get inspected and any deficiencies repaired.

That way there is a very noticable difference in profit between cutting corners and doing things right, and it shouldn't have as much effect on fuel prices in the long run. Just a short term bump.

Closing wells would bring oil prices up, and politicians don't like that.

[Arragonis]

Whilst BP have serious operational and safety deficiencies and rightly consequential liabilities on this occasion, I suspect an inspection of all rigs belonging to all companies will probably find lots and lots of corners being cut, costs being reduced, time saved and safety compromised.

So a probable crack down on all companies would seem to be the best course. We may have to accept prices will rise as a result though.

But it would also help if the Industrialised World governments also made sure their companies, not just BP, also paid attention to safety and polution in other parts of the world. The Oil polution situation in Nigeria and parts of South America are far worse than the gulf of Mexico now and has been for a very long time. And those 'leaks' include companies owned all over the world - US, Europe and Asia.

[Piwoslaw]

[ShadeTreeMech]

LOL love it.

[rmay635703]

These are some little tidbits but I always wondered why we didn't bother using the natural gas or methane hydrate that caused the deepwater explosion.

Did Deepwater Methane Hydrates Cause the BP Gulf Explosion? | SolveClimate.com
Methane Hydrates, the fuel of the future? - SciForums.com
Methane gas: An unconventional energy resource
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/20...007-214816.pdf
http://drs.nio.org/drs/bitstream/226...dies_9_111.pdf

The extraction is actually not very complex, heat or small changes in pressure, its all over the ocean floor in the Gulf and the cause of the deepwater explosions.

Seems to me maybe we should shift our focus and learn from blowing up a rig and use the fuel thats already out of the crust and on the floor. Instead of continuing to punch holes in it.

Methanol, CNG or synth gas fuels all are workable, just nobody seems to want to redevelope things we used during war time in WWII.

As for liabilities because of BPs stupidity the gulf will be more or less permanently ruined, crude has good numbers of heavies, arsenic, mercury and other goodies in it that will never go away, generations will suffer if they eat fish from anywhere near the spill location.

BP should be made to pay by causing a situation to lower oil prices, reopening the thousands of capped wells out west, using methane and CNG that just get burned off to this day and offering more CNG/gasoline hybred cars would be a start.

Cheers
Ryan

[clanny]

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings on this matter. To give you some background, I work for bp (at least for the next 3 days because I handed my notice in before any of this started). I have recently completed an honours degree in Energy and Environmental engineering (hence the job change). I have always liked the outdoors and love fishing and feel very strongly about the environment.

What I do see from this thread and from what I've learned in the industry is that there's a ****-load of propaganda going about. America is gearing up for mid term elections and most of the politicians seem to be enjoying making a song and a dance about how tough they are on "british petroleum" (despite the name being change over a decade ago). They're deliberately making this a "non-american" thing. They're giving it a racial slant. Those bad people from outside our shores are making our shores all dirty.

I've just read all 8 pages listed so far and I'll try to cover the points that stuck on my mind. The plastic collection device - it wouldn't work. The well is over a mile down to the sea floor. The currents/tides will move the oil way outside any collection device radius before it gets to the surface. If it gets to the surface. The oil rig itself is sitting 250m away from the bop!

Most of the things that have been tried so far have been sucessfull to an extent. The pipe that they inserted into the riser (riser insertion tool) managed to collect 10k barrels a day. Whilst that isn't the lot, it still adds up. The ship they have on now, is collecting more. All these things are doing something to reduce the impact of the disaster. It may only be 1% or it may be 10% but at least it's something. Bp as a company knows that the final solution is the bottom kill (by drilling the relief wells) but rather than sit about doing nothing, surely it's better to try something even if it's got a 1% chance of working. It's not like the employees aren't drilling while they're working on other stuff. Money is NO OBJECT here. Seriously. ALL major oil companies are there helping because they all know that it could just as easy have been them and they all have exactly the same emergency procedures.

The T piece solution. Yep, in theory it's a good idea and has definately been considered. However. There's been a failure in the BOP. It's possible that some cement from the Haliburton boreliner has been stuck inside it. That being the case, and allied with the fact that there was an explosion and an oil rig that sank whilst attached to the BOP by a large bore pipe, there could easily be weak points in the structure. If bp were to cap the BOP (which they may possibly be in the posion to do) and the increase in pressure inside the BOP causes a failure then they're left with a well which has NO restriction and possible no BOP, jetting oil into the gulf at a MUCH increased rate. The lesser of the two evils perhaps?

The latest news I had was that they were within 55ft of the well bore on the 28th of June. They have to do a LOT of checks to ensure that they get it right. Remember, they're drilling from a rig, floating on a rough sea, 5,000 feet above the sea bed, then drilling through about 15,000 feet of rock at an angle, and have to try to hit a target that's about 8" across. They'll be running the relief well parallel to the original well to take magnetic readings to locate it properly and then they'll drill in.

Sorry if I'm jumping about a bit here but I'm writing as I remember things. The only people who'll ultimately get rich off of this are lawyers. Despite the American media being completely anti british, there are several other companies who'll be involved. This will grind on for decades. Just check how long the Exxon Valdez has. And that is an American company. Personally I think the bp response is probably as good as it could have been. No-one expects things like this and you can bet this is another industry changer. Like the Valdez, lessons will be learned, management will change, Hayward will go as soon as the well is capped and the oil stopped, etc etc etc.

The environment will recover. The Ixtoc spill happened in the gulf and within 3 years things had recovered. Nature is more powerful than a lot of people give her credit for. This is not the only oil spill. The hurricanes will break some up, microbes will eat some, some will weather off, the gas will evaporate, etc etc etc.

Lastly, please don't think I'm defending bp with rose coloured glasses here. I'm well aware that oil companies can do things wrong. What I'm saying is please don't believe everything you hear on 60 minutes. These programmes, the populist media etc won't sell without headlines. They'll pick the worst case scenario and go with it like it's gospel. Most of teh time it's not. Bp has been slated because the spill has turned out to be bigger than the originally mentioned 1000 barrels a day. Check back, it wasn't bp that came up with that figure. They were still trying to work it out and the media came up with that. And yet now bp gets the blame. I'm more than happy for bp (and any other oil company for that matter) to get the blame for stuff that they did (oh, better not mention Union Carbide here should we?) and to pay up for the damage they've done, but you guys on here are here because you've all got brains. And are using them. And that's why I'm here too. Lets use them to filter out the unsubstantiated crap around this.

Lastly, I'm really sorry that there's people out of work because of this. You can guarantee that no oil industry company wanted this to happen. I myself have lost many many thousands because of the drop in share price. However, if the US govt drives bp bust over this, no-one will gain. There'll ne no money to fix the cleanup, there'll be more people out of work. Did you know that bp provides 25% of the oil to America? Imagine the American economy if the suggestion above about shutting bp down until they can prove it's all working safely. With ALL human activity there's a risk. And even if we survive all that, we still die. Fact of life. Rather than trying to immediately lay blame (like the American politicians are doing), we should focus our efforts on fixing things (like bp is doing - have you heard them whinging about whop's fault it is?) and learning for the future.

Sorry for the long rambling post. I just thought I'd like to get some of my thoughts down. I'd be more than happy to discuss this in more detail with anyone.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by clanny

The environment will recover. The Ixtoc spill happened in the gulf and within 3 years things had recovered. Nature is more powerful than a lot of people give her credit for. This is not the only oil spill. The hurricanes will break some up, microbes will eat some, some will weather off, the gas will evaporate, etc etc etc.
And that's why I'm here too. Lets use them to filter out the unsubstantiated crap around this.

The environment recovers to a point but like the river a few miles from me, things don't completely recover, I can eat maybe one fish a month out of there due to things done 40+ years ago. However there are at least some fish in there now, where there weren't a long time ago.

Originally Posted by clanny

Lastly, I'm really sorry that there's people out of work because of this. You can guarantee that no oil industry company wanted this to happen.

Like any company their main directive is profit motive, profit motive is risk and is completely opposing environment aspects because of the economic cost. They didn't want anyone to go out of work but they didn't do what was required to reduce the likelyhood of it either, profit prevails.

Originally Posted by clanny

However, if the US govt drives bp bust over this, no-one will gain. There'll ne no money to fix the cleanup, there'll be more people out of work. Did you know that bp provides 25% of the oil to America? Imagine the American economy if the suggestion above about shutting bp down until they can prove it's all working safely.

BP won't go bust, they have deep pockets, your 25% statement is very frightening and is the #1 problem with out country, our goals in this country for the last 40 years seem to be toward making singular companies for entire aspects of the economy, 1 bank, 1 grocer, 1 car company, 1 oil company. This is nothing more than economic socialism. We need to diversify and change the game so smaller more diverse supplies of energy exist, our governments efforts to eliminate all the mom and pop oil wells in the 60's and 70's was a horrible mistake, much like factory farming is one of the greatest hidden problems in this country at the moment.

We suffer from mistakes of this magnitude because the too big to fail tend to screw up in a too big way.

Originally Posted by clanny

Sorry for the long rambling post. I just thought I'd like to get some of my thoughts down. I'd be more than happy to discuss this in more detail with anyone.

Don't be, what really should have happened is something that hasn't since WWII, shut down the country, mobilize anyone and everyone that can help for the good of the nation and crush the problem with all the manpower we have. Historically when oil wells have gone bust in this way, we would just drop as many tens of thousands of tons of clay, concrete and rubbish on the thing until it was plugged up. Not the best but maybe quicker way to slow it down until the relief wells are there.

Too bad we don't just do things right the first time eh?

[nibs]

Good post Clanny, the main thing I get from what you say is that we need to get off the oil band waggon. It seems to me, and many other people more knowledgeable than I, that we must go to electric cars for people moving & bio fuels for moving freight.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

Like any company their main directive is profit motive, profit motive is risk and is completely opposing environment aspects because of the economic cost. They didn't want anyone to go out of work but they didn't do what was required to reduce the likelyhood of it either, profit prevails.

Not really. Think about what having to pay for all the damages is doing to BP's bottom line.

The problem is not profit-seeking, but short-term profit seeking. You have a lot of management - not just at BP, but at most companies - who only care about the next quarter's results, because that's what their bonuses & promotions depend on. So they sacrifice long-term investments for short-term profits, and take risks for those profits. Same with Wall Street & the mortgage derivatives. Most sensible people knew they were insanely risky, but the managers did them anyway because the short-term profits were so good. And besides, it wasn't THEIR money. The worst that could happen if things went bad is that they'd get fired.