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  1. #601
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    Quote Originally Posted by ArmadaBC View Post
    Agreed, the plumes concentration at most is .05ppm which all things considered is really low. For instance it would not be visable to the naked eye which contradicts lots of bullshit some media outlets were reporting additonally if that was fresh water and Benzene the EPA would let you drink it.

    This is wrong.... like an order of magnitude wrong...the MCL for benzene is 5 ppb-- 0.05 ppm = 50 ppb
    let your tracks be lost in the dark and snow

  2. #602
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    Now worse than Ixtoc.

    Original estimates of 240,000 gallons were a lie. Not just wrong, but a lie. Now that some reliable estimates suggest that we are more in the 2 million gallons a day range, possibly more. Over 100 million gallons of oil dumped in to the gulf.

    Burn in hell motherfuckers, burn in hell.

    IDK where I got yard waste. I think I might have just gotten done mowing the lawn or something.
    Quote Originally Posted by stuckathuntermtn View Post
    youretarded.

  3. #603
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    Quote Originally Posted by mock1 View Post
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AAa0...ayer_embedded#!

    James Michael Taylor" You can go to jail for accidentally killing a deer but you can bring on the extinction of a whole ecosystem's fauna and flora and not even be chargfed with a crime. "
    I hope there is a higher court somewhere to bring justice.
    Saw the vid elsewhere... needs better exposure here;

    pmiP triD remroF

    -dna-

    !!!timoV cimotA erutuF

    -ottom-

    "!!!emit a ta anigav eno dlroW eht gnirolpxE"

  4. #604
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    Interesting feature article from Rolling Stone, The Spill, The Scandal and the President.

    Rolling Stone is not what you call middle of the road on political issues. But it's still a good read.

    Money quote:
    ...though George W. Bush paved the way for the catastrophe, it was Obama who gave BP the green light to drill. "Bush owns eight years of the mess," says Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California. "But after more than a year on the job, Salazar owns it too."

  5. #605
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    http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/06/1...nzy/index.html

    Fareed Zakaria nails it again.

    That RS article is pretty unrealistic...of course everyone wants to get away from oil and find new sources of energy, and hopefully there's a little more urgency to push our way down that path now, but the author seems to starkly underestimate our current dependence on oil, and the economic effects of going cold turkey off it. Also expecting the government to play the leading role in the cleaning up of something the government has proven it doesnt have much expertise in is ridiculous. Too much idealism in that article, not enough reality.

    We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.

  6. #606
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mathematics View Post
    Oh really? Did I miss where he talked about conservation of energy somewhere? If you think he nailed it I must have.

  7. #607
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    Quote Originally Posted by uglymoney View Post
    Oh really? Did I miss where he talked about conservation of energy somewhere? If you think he nailed it I must have.
    hey dumbass did you bother reading the article? It wasnt about conservation of energy, it was about the media firestorm in this country and Obama's forced response to it, instead of focusing on his job. Lets work on those reading perception skills mmmk?

    "What worries me is that we have gotten to the point where we expect the president to somehow magically solve every problem in the world, appear to be doing it, and to reflect our anger and emotion. This is a kind of bizarre trivializing of the presidency into some kind of national psychiatrist-in-chief."

    We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.

  8. #608
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mathematics View Post
    hey dumbass did you bother reading the article? It wasnt about conservation of energy, it was about the media firestorm in this country and Obama's forced response to it, instead of focusing on his job. Lets work on those reading perception skills mmmk?

    "What worries me is that we have gotten to the point where we expect the president to somehow magically solve every problem in the world, appear to be doing it, and to reflect our anger and emotion. This is a kind of bizarre trivializing of the presidency into some kind of national psychiatrist-in-chief."
    Awesome display of arrogance. I read the whole article and while I agree with parts of it he said this:

    "In the long run, of course, offshore drilling or any kind of drilling in the United States is not much of a solution for our energy problems. What we really need is an energy policy with dramatic investments in alternative energy technology, that's the kind of broader direction we should be going in. But meanwhile we still do need oil, and this has, by and large, proven a safe way to do it."

    That was his offered opinion. Nowhere did he talk about conservation of energy - which is far, far cheaper and quicker than all the other bullshit combined.

    You said he "nailed it" and I disagree you . ''Dumbass'
    Last edited by uglymoney; 06-11-2010 at 09:42 PM.

  9. #609
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    Quote Originally Posted by uglymoney View Post
    Awesome display of arrogance. I read the whole article and while I agree with parts of it he said this:

    "In the long run, of course, offshore drilling or any kind of drilling in the United States is not much of a solution for our energy problems. What we really need is an energy policy with dramatic investments in alternative energy technology, that's the kind of broader direction we should be going in. But meanwhile we still do need oil, and this has, by and large, proven a safe way to do it."

    That was his offered opinion. Nowhere did he talk about conservation of energy - which is far, far cheaper and quicker than all the other bullshit combined.

    You said he "nailed it" and I disagree you . ''Dumbass'
    so you were looking for his article to point out something specific (say, "conservation of energy"), and his given opinion in this particular article really didn't mention that at all. Nevermind the article header has to do with Obama & the media, and really wasnt attempting to make a point out of energy conservation anyways. and now you're butthurt?


    Quote Originally Posted by uglymoney View Post
    Nowhere did he talk about conservation of energy - which is far, far cheaper and quicker than all the other bullshit combined.
    Please elaborate on your master plan to save the world.

    We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.

  10. #610
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mathematics View Post
    http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/06/1...nzy/index.html

    Fareed Zakaria nails it again.

    That RS article is pretty unrealistic...of course everyone wants to get away from oil and find new sources of energy, and hopefully there's a little more urgency to push our way down that path now, but the author seems to starkly underestimate our current dependence on oil, and the economic effects of going cold turkey off it. Also expecting the government to play the leading role in the cleaning up of something the government has proven it doesnt have much expertise in is ridiculous. Too much idealism in that article, not enough reality.
    Gotta agree with Mathmatics... The point being, Obama is wasting time and should be focusing on more international events.

    Obama focusing solely on the Gulf is so much f'n theater and unproductive. WTF does he know about capping wells... hell, he grew up in Kansas! Let BP do what they have to do and maybe be supportive in their attempt to solve this. Talking tough is assinine right now and makes him look like a pandering politician. This whole thing sucks, but the posturing by Obama is ridiculous.

    I do agree that we need to conserve more, but the article isn't about that. It's about Obama and his response to the current gulf crisis.


    Also, Nice vid Mock vomit!
    Screw the net, Surf the backcountry!

  11. #611
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mathematics View Post
    so you were looking for his article to point out something specific (say, "conservation of energy"), and his given opinion in this particular article really didn't mention that at all. Nevermind the article header has to do with Obama & the media, and really wasnt attempting to make a point out of energy conservation anyways. and now you're butthurt?
    Seriously? The whole article is talking about the governments response to the oil spill, Obama's response - much of it is absolutely spot on - but in order for the article to have 'nailed it' he needed to mention our continued addiction to cheap oil going forward and our governments failure to do anything about the demand side - which is where the low lying fruit hangs. This tragedy presents a lost opportunity for Obama and the progressives to remind all Americans that they share in the blame when they demand cheap and easy oil and another golden but lost opportunity to develop a strategy that will enable us to use less energy of all types through conservation.

    To me that has to be a part of this conversation, but it isn't.

    Thus the article fails in my mind, and clearly I see things through a different lens than you do, and in your mind that makes me a dumbass and butthurt.

    Fair enough.


    Last edited by uglymoney; 06-12-2010 at 09:46 AM.

  12. #612
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    Quote Originally Posted by BigDaddy View Post
    Talking tough is assinine right now and makes him look like a pandering politician. This whole thing sucks, but the posturing by Obama is ridiculous.
    This part I agree with. I don't agree that he should move his focus away from the gulf though. That is just unrealistic.

    Quote Originally Posted by BigDaddy View Post
    I do agree that we need to conserve more, but the article isn't about that. It's about Obama and his response to the current gulf crisis.
    We act like the government is powerless to do anything about our demand for oil. They are not. Obama can't dive down there and plug that leak but he sure as hell could raise the price of gas by a couple dollars a gallon to plug the leaks at the gas pumps that line our city streets.
    Last edited by uglymoney; 06-12-2010 at 09:29 AM.

  13. #613
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    People complain the president wasn't doing enough about the spill. So he makes a trip down there and does some interviews to show he's on top of it. Now people complain he is a pandering politician and should be doing other things.

    He can't win no matter what he does.

  14. #614
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    Quote Originally Posted by sliced View Post
    People complain the president wasn't doing enough about the spill. So he makes a trip down there and does some interviews to show he's on top of it. Now people complain he is a pandering politician and should be doing other things.

    He can't win no matter what he does.
    break him down before they build him up, again, at election time. that is what will happen at election time.

    The media is in love with Obama, don't forget that....this crisis will pass, sucks, but will pass.

  15. #615
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    Quote Originally Posted by uglymoney View Post
    Obama can't dive down there and plug that leak but he sure as hell could raise the price of gas by a couple dollars a gallon to plug the leaks at the gas pumps that line our city streets.
    That's hilarious. Pass me whatever you're smoking.

    You do remember the little economic hiccup we just went through, right? Want to make that come back with a vengeance? Raise the price of gas.

  16. #616
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    I like what he's talking about now. Setting up a Huge escrow account to pay for economic damage claims. If BP agrees they circumvent the 75 million cap. If BP disagrees they will look BAD.
    Quote Originally Posted by stuckathuntermtn View Post
    youretarded.

  17. #617
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tippster View Post
    That's hilarious. Pass me whatever you're smoking.

    You do remember the little economic hiccup we just went through, right? Want to make that come back with a vengeance? Raise the price of gas.
    Look here dumbass I am not high!!!!

    Okay just kidding. I'm a little high because I just came from the lake where I got high from skiing.

    Seriously though I do agree the economy could not handle a straight $2 tax per gallon at this point without the money being refunded somehow. I floated this idea a few years ago and now the idea is being floated by economists and global warming believers. Raise the tax on gas and then rebate that money back into the economy through tax incentives or tax rebates elsewhere in the market = a zero net tax increase = more money in peoples pockets to spend on other goods and services = less money leaving the country = better trade balance = less co2 = less need for hurry up drilling in the gulf = healthy fishing economy.


    I could go on, but my morning on the lake was just too good - and even with $6 or $8 gas we'd still get it done That F4L is taking some practice though. The camera kept focusing on all the spray instead of the skier so I started focusing then switching it to manual. Need to work on my live view skills. No matter - here is a friend.


  18. #618
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    Here's the latest from the doom and gloom crowd..

    In my opinion BP and our Govt have not been forthcoming about what is really is going on with this well and the situation we will likely face. Understandably they would not want to create panic, but we also need to prepare for this oil leak getting worse, ignoring the reality that there is good chance it will get worse leaves us vulnerable. Just like we shutter up before a hurricane we should be preparing now because we know that if we don't, we are going to sustain far more damage than if we did.

    I'm not going to get into the oil remediation aspect or the control of the already released oil nor the politics involved in the overall situation other than to say we need to prepare for the worst and should be doing that now. I want to cover the mechanics of what is going on now at the well subsea and what has happened and what the results tell us. Since we are not getting very much clear information about what those results or lack of results mean, I think it's important for everyone to know what is happening and the possibilities of what may come.

    As you have probably seen and maybe feel yourselves, there are several things that do not appear to make sense regarding the actions of attack against the well. Don't feel bad, there is much that doesn't make sense even to professionals unless you take into account some important variables that we are not being told about. There seems to me to be a reluctance to face what cannot be termed anything less than grim circumstances in my opinion. There certainly is a reluctance to inform us regular people and all we have really gotten is a few dots here and there...in this post I hope to connect some of those dots and show where we are headed...

    First of all...set aside all your thoughts of plugging the well and stopping it from blowing out oil using any method from the top down. Plugs, big valves to just shut it off, pinching the pipe closed, installing a new bop or lmrp, shooting any epoxy in it, top kills with mud etc etc etc....forget that, it won't be happening..it's done and over. In fact actually opening up the well at the subsea source and allowing it to gush more is not only exactly what has happened, it was probably necessary, or so they think anyway.

    So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse?...there really can only be one answer and that answer does not bode well for all of us. It's really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe. Nothing makes sense unless you take this into account, but after you do...you will see the "sense" behind what has happened and what is happening. That conclusion is this:

    The well bore structure is compromised "Down hole".

    That is something which is a "Worst nightmare" conclusion to reach. While many have been saying this for some time as with any complex disaster of this proportion many have "said" a lot of things with no real sound reasons or evidence for jumping to such conclusions, well this time it appears that they may have jumped into the right place...I will show you why this conclusion is inescapable and why the real evidence points to it.


    TOP KILL - FAILS:

    When I said in my first post "Pray this works" I meant it, it didn't work. This was probably our best and only chance to kill this well from the top down. This "kill mud" is a tried and true method of killing wells and usually has a very good chance of success. The depth of this well presented some logistical challenges, but it really should not of presented any functional obstructions. The pumping capacity was there and it would have worked, should have worked, but it didn't.

    It didn't work, but it did create evidence of what is really happening. First of all the method used in this particular top kill made no sense, did not follow the standard operating procedure used to kill many other wells and in fact for the most part was completely contrary to the procedure which would have given it any real chance of working.

    When a well is "Killed" using this method heavy drill fluid "Mud" is pumped at high volume and pressure into a leaking well. The leaks are "behind" the point of access where the mud is fired in, in this case the "choke and Kill lines" which are at the very bottom of the BOP (Blow Out Preventer) The heavy fluid gathers in the "behind" portion of the leaking well assembly, while some will leak out, it very quickly overtakes the flow of oil and only the heavier mud will leak out. Once that "solid" flow of mud is established at the leak "behind" the well, the mud pumps increase pressure and begin to overtake the pressure of the oil deposit. The mud is established in a solid column that is driven downward by the now stronger pumps. The heavy mud will create a solid column that is so heavy that the oil deposit can no longer push it up, shut off the pumps...the well is killed...it can no longer flow.

    Usually this will happen fairly quickly, in fact for it to work at all...it must happen quickly. There is no "trickle some mud in" because that is not how a top kill works. The flowing oil will just flush out the trickle and a solid column will never be established. Yet what we were told was "It will take days to know whether it
    worked"...."Top kill might take 48 hours to complete"...the only way it could take days is if BP intended to do some "test fires" to test integrity of the entire system. The actual "kill" can only take hours by nature because it must happen fairly rapidly. It also increases strain on the "behind" portion and in this instance we all know that what remained was fragile at best.

    Early that afternoon we saw a massive flow burst out of the riser "plume" area. This was the first test fire of high pressure mud injection. Later on same day we saw a greatly increased flow out of the kink leaks, this was mostly mud at that time as the kill mud is tanish color due to the high amount of Barite which is added to it to weight it and Barite is a white powder. Here is what Barite looks like:

    [link to www.ecplaza.net]

    We later learned the pumping was shut down at midnight, we weren't told about that until almost 16 hours later, but by then...I'm sure BP had learned the worst. The mud they were pumping in was not only leaking out the "behind" leaks...it was leaking out of someplace forward...and since they were not even near being able to pump mud into the deposit itself, because the well would be dead long before...and the oil was still coming up, there could only be one conclusion...the wells casings were ruptured and it was leaking "down hole"

    They tried the "Junk shot"...the "bridging materials" which also failed and likely made things worse in regards to the ruptured well casings.

    "Despite successfully pumping a total of over 30,000 barrels of heavy mud, in three attempts at rates of up to
    80 barrels a minute, and deploying a wide range of different bridging materials, the operation did not overcome the flow from the well."

    [link to www.bp.com]

    80 Barrels per minute is over 200,000 gallons per hour, over 115,000 barrels per day...did we seen an increase over and above what was already leaking out of 115k bpd?....we did not...it would have been a massive increase in order of multiples and this did not happen.

    "The whole purpose is to get the kill mud down,” said Wells. “We'll have 50,000 barrels of mud on hand to kill this well. It's far more than necessary, but we always like to have backup."

    Try finding THAT quote around...it's been scrubbed...here's a cached copy of a quote...

    [link to webcache.googleusercontent.com]

    Dead search results a plenty.

    [link to www.google.com]

    "The "top kill" effort, launched Wednesday afternoon by industry and government engineers, had pumped enough drilling fluid to block oil and gas spewing from the well, Allen said. The pressure from the well was very low, he said, but persisting."

    "Allen said one ship that was pumping fluid into the well had run out of the fluid, or "mud," and that a second ship was on the way. He said he was encouraged by the progress."

  19. #619
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    part 2of3

    Later we found out that Allen had no idea what was really going on and had been "Unavailable all day"

    [link to www.realclearpolitics.com]

    So what we had was BP running out of 50,000 barrels of mud in a very short period of time. An amount far and above what they deemed necessary to kill the well. Shutting down pumping 16 hours before telling anyone, including the president. We were never really given a clear reason why "Top Kill" failed, just that it couldn't overcome the well.

    There is only one article anywhere that says anything else about it at this time of writing...and it's a relatively obscure article from the wall street journal "online" citing an unnamed source.

    "WASHINGTON—BP PLC has concluded that its "top-kill" attempt last week to seal its broken well in the Gulf of
    Mexico may have failed due to a malfunctioning disk inside the well about 1,000 feet below the ocean floor.

    The disk, part of the subsea safety infrastructure, may have ruptured during the surge of oil and gas up the well on April 20 that led to the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP officials said. The rig sank two days later, triggering a leak that has since become the worst in U.S. history.

    The broken disk may have prevented the heavy drilling mud injected into the well last week from getting far enough down the well to overcome the pressure from the escaping oil and gas, people familiar with BP's findings said. They said much of the drilling mud may also have escaped from the well into the rock formation outside the wellbore.

    As a result, BP wasn't able to get sufficient pressure to keep the oil and gas at bay. If they had been able to build up sufficient pressure, the company had hoped to pump in cement and seal off the well. The effort was deemed a failure on Saturday. BP started the top-kill effort Wednesday afternoon, shooting heavy drilling fluids into the broken valve known as a blowout preventer. The mud was driven by a 30,000 horsepower pump installed on a ship at the surface. But it was clear from the start that a lot of the "kill mud" was leaking out instead of going down into the well."

    [link to online.wsj.com]

    There are some inconsistencies with this article.
    There are no "Disks" or "Subsea safety structure" 1,000 feet below the sea floor, all that is there is well bore. There is nothing that can allow the mud or oil to "escape" into the rock formation outside the well bore except the well, because it is the only thing there.

    All the actions and few tid bits of information all lead to one inescapable conclusion. The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking. Now you have some real data of how BP's actions are evidence of that, as well as some murky statement from "BP officials" confirming the same.

    I took some time to go into a bit of detail concerning the failure of Top Kill because this was a significant event. To those of us outside the real inside loop, yet still fairly knowledgeable, it was a major confirmation of what many feared. That the system below the sea floor has serious failures of varying magnitude in the complicated chain, and it is breaking down and it will continue to.

    What does this mean?

    It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?...it doesn't leak so bad, you close the nozzle?...it leaks real bad,
    same dynamics. It is why they sawed the riser off...or tried to anyway...but they clipped it off, to relieve pressure on the leaks "down hole". I'm sure there was a bit of panic time after they crimp/pinched off the large riser pipe and the Diamond wire saw got stuck and failed...because that crimp diverted pressure and flow to the rupture down below.

    Contrary to what most of us would think as logical to stop the oil mess, actually opening up the gushing well and making it gush more became direction BP took after confirming that there was a leak. In fact if you note their actions, that should become clear. They have shifted from stopping or restricting the gusher to opening it up and catching it. This only makes sense if they want to relieve pressure at the leak hidden down below the seabed.....and that sort of leak is one of the most dangerous and potentially damaging kind of leak there could be. It is also inaccessible which compounds our problems. There is no way to stop that leak from above, all they can do is relieve the pressure on it and the only way to do that right now is to open up the nozzle above and gush more oil into the gulf and hopefully catch it, which they have done, they just neglected to tell us why, gee thanks.

    A down hole leak is dangerous and damaging for several reasons.
    There will be erosion throughout the entire beat up, beat on and beat down remainder of the "system" including that inaccessible leak. The same erosion I spoke about in the first post is still present and has never stopped, cannot be stopped, is impossible to stop and will always be present in and acting on anything that is left which has crude oil "Product" rushing through it. There are abrasives still present, swirling flow will create hot spots of wear and this erosion is relentless and will always be present until eventually it wears away enough material to break it's way out. It will slowly eat the bop away especially at the now pinched off riser head and it will flow more and more. Perhaps BP can outrun or keep up with that out flow with various suckage methods for a period of time, but eventually the well will win that race, just how long that race will be?...no one really knows....However now?...there are other problems that a down hole leak will and must produce that will compound this already bad situation.

    This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer's immense bulk of 450 tons. In fact?...we are beginning to the results of the well's total integrity beginning to fail due to the undermining being caused by the leaking well bore.

    The first layer of the sea floor in the gulf is mostly lose material of sand and silt. It doesn't hold up anything and isn't meant to, what holds the entire subsea system of the Bop in place is the well itself. The very large steel connectors of the initial well head "spud" stabbed in to the sea floor. The Bop literally sits on top of the pipe and never touches the sea bed, it wouldn't do anything in way of support if it did. After several tens of feet the seabed does begin to support the well connection laterally (side to side) you couldn't put a 450 ton piece of machinery on top of a 100' tall pipe "in the air" and subject it to the side loads caused by the ocean currents and expect it not to bend over...unless that pipe was very much larger than the machine itself, which you all can see it is not. The well's piping in comparison is actually very much smaller than the Blow Out Preventer and strong as it may be, it relies on some support from the seabed to function and not literally fall over...and it is now showing signs of doing just that....falling over.


    If you have been watching the live feed cams you may have noticed that some of the ROVs are using an inclinometer...and inclinometer is an instrument that measures "Incline" or tilt. The BOP is not supposed to be tilting...and after the riser clip off operation it has begun to...as evidenced in these pictures. I'm not going put in a lot of pics because this post is long enough already.

    undermin1
    undermin2
    tiltincline


    This is not the only problem that occurs due to erosion of the outer area of the well casings. The way a well casing assembly functions it that it is an assembly of different sized "tubes" that decrease in size as they go down. These tubes have a connection to each other that is not unlike a click or snap together locking action. After a certain length is assembled they are cemented around the ouside to the earth that the more rough drill hole is bored through in the well making process. A very well put together and simply explained process of "How to drill a deep water oil well" is availible here:

    [link to www.treesfullofmoney.com]

    The well bore casings rely on the support that is created by the cementing phase of well construction. Just like if you have many hands holding a pipe up you could put some weight on the top and the many hands could hold the pipe and the weight on top easily...but if there were no hands gripping and holding the pipe?...all the weight must be held up by the pipe alone. The series of connections between the sections of casings are not designed to hold up the immense weight of the BOP without all the "hands" that the cementing provides and they will eventually buckle and fail when stressed beyond their design limits.

  20. #620
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    part 3of3

    These are clear and present dangers to the battered subsea safety structure (bop and lmrp) which is the only loose cork on this well we have left. The immediate (first 1,000 feet) of well structure that remains is now also undoubtedly compromised. However.....as bad as that is?...it is far from the only possible problems with this very problematic well. There were ongoing troubles with the entire process during the drilling of this well. There were also many comprises made by BP IMO which may have resulted in an overall weakened structure of the entire well system all the way to the bottom plug which is over 12,000 feet deep. Problems with the cementing procedure which was done by Haliburton and was deemed as “was against our best practices.” by a Haliburton employee on April 1st weeks before the well blew out. There is much more and I won't go into detail right now concerning the lower end of the well and the troubles encountered during the whole creation of this well and earlier "Well control" situations that were revieled in various internal BP e-mails. I will add several links to those documents and quotes from them below and for now, address the issues concerning the upper portion of the well and the region of the sea floor.

    What is likely to happen now?

    Well...none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact...it's about as bad as it gets. I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system is accelerating and attacking more key structural areas of the well, the blow out preventer and surrounding strata holding it all up and together. This is evidenced by the tilt of the blow out preventer and the erosion which has exposed the well head connection. What eventually will happen is that the blow out preventer will literally tip over if they do not run supports to it as the currents push on it. I suspect they will run those supports as cables tied to anchors very soon, if they don't, they are inviting disaster that much sooner.

    Eventually even that will be futile as the well casings cannot support the weight of the massive system above with out the cement bond to the earth and that bond is being eroded away. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? ...it won't be too long after that the entire system fails. BP must be aware of this, they are mapping the sea floor sonically and that is not a mere exercise. Our Gov't must be well aware too, they just are not telling us.

    All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit...after that, it goes into the realm of "the worst things you can think of" The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out...as I said...all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn't any "cap dome" or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?....is the only real chance we have left to stop it all.

    It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo.

    We are not even 2 months into it, barely half way by even optimistic estimates. The damage done by the leaked oil now is virtually immeasurable already and it will not get better, it can only get worse. No matter how much they can collect, there will still be thousands and thousands of gallons leaking out every minute, every hour of every day. We have 2 months left before the relief wells are even near in position and set up to take a kill shot and that is being optimistic as I said.

    Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation also cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can "get there first"...us or the well.

    We can only hope the race against that eventuality is one we can win, but my assessment I am sad to say is that we will not.

    The system will collapse or fail substantially before we reach the finish line ahead of the well and the worst is yet to come.

    Sorry to bring you that news, I know it is grim, but that is the way I see it....I sincerely hope I am wrong.

    We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down.

    The magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our life times if the worst or even near worst happens...

    We are seeing the puny forces of man vs the awesome forces of nature.
    We are going to need some luck and a lot of effort to win...
    and if nature decides we ought to lose, we will....


    Godspeed, we surely need it...

  21. #621
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    That's the most depressing thing I've read in years.

    At least I have memories of beautiful white beaches in the gulf and the Florida Keys

  22. #622
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    Do you have a link to the original, yonder?
    Quote Originally Posted by Kenny Powers
    That's how the plague started back in the day...from a little disgusting bird bath in someones back yard that rats made sex to birds in and created a whole new type of AIDS

  23. #623
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    That's nothing. If you want depressing read some of the work by Peak Oil doom and gloomers. They are experts in crafting inescapable conclusions via linkage of endless breathtaking certainties, which is exactly what that guy above is doing. And like a high-sugar action thriller, readers with a pre-disposition or worse, an endless need to think "we are all fucked", swallow it without one ounce of real critical thought. Humans are always going to filter out anything that does not support their individual biases and so any conclusion can convincingly be reached if presented in the right way to the right people. All it takes is one absolute after another to be declared with a conclusion so shocking that it doesn't matter if the writer is very very wrong and ignorant of unlimited variables that always pop up along the way.

    By the by, I happen to think that we are fairly fucked and that very expensive energy is just around the corner. So if you like your food in big and frequent quantities, now might be a good time to start cutting back rather than by force later on. And get lots of ammo so you can fend off the hypocritical Rep. TeaBagger types taking from you by force what is not theirs to take. This has absolutely nothing to do with the topic, rather it is just a little pet bias of mine.
    Life is not lift served.

  24. #624
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    Here's the best link to check it out at: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967

    The Oil Drum is by far the best website for real information on what's going on in the GOM. It's got a lot of extra traffic lately so you have to filter through a bunch of amateur ramblings but there is lots of expert analysis as well.

    I copied the text from the original website it came from which is mostly a bunch of conspiracy nuts. This post has a little more validity to it however. It makes a lot of assumptions but it's hard to deny that there are chances shit could really hit the fan if the casing continues to deteriorate.

    BP needs to come clean with what they know about potential weaknesses down hole. They either a) don't know for sure, but have some vague assumptions, b) know and don't think it's a concern or c) know and feel that it's not in anyone's best interest to tell them about it.

    You think this shit is doomy, you should read the stuff from people who think there's a chance of the well bore destruction fracturing the entire GoM region due to the weak geology below the surface.

  25. #625
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    Yonder, that was the worst thing I have read in as long as I can remember. I certainly hope it is not true, but it makes sense.

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