Gulf oil spill question

[jon lynn]

How much oil can come out of that leaking well? Is there an indefinite amount, or would/could it eventually run dry like some land drilling?

I may have a childish wonder, but could the leak last so long that it could devastate all ocean life?

What is the worse case senerio ?

[skeet]

I've been kinda wondering how long this thing could go on..If I had an oil well...it would run outta oil in 3 days

[Jack]

I think any oil well runs dry eventually. I guess that's the good news.
The bad news is, there are oil wells that have been producing oil for 30 years or more.

[buckhunter]

I heard on the radio this morning that it would go for about 3 years. What a mess that would make.

[Rapier]

Guys, this is way worse than anyone is being told up front. The truth is coming in drips and drabs. It is so obvious that no one in Congress or the O'BS Administration wants the truth to appear all at once. They are covering crap like a cat. Best example is the flow of the well, started at 10K barrels, then 20K, then 30K then 40K. when they had the production figures all along.

Facts:
The well is spewing 1.6 million gallons per day!
So far 100 million gallons plus.
The field is said to be the size of Saudi Arabia, it is huge!
The blow out preventers had but one switch, electric wire activated, which instantly broke when the pipe seperated.
North Sea wells are required two switches acustic and electric, their blow out preventers are expensive but, they work.
No one right now knows how to shut the well off, they are trying different approaches but all are experiments.
It has been confirmed by testing that the oil has entered the Loop Current in the Gulf.
The Loop Current runs along the north Gulf, very deep and emerges in the Keys, at a shallow depth, runs through the coral reef heads and out into the Gulf Stream into the Atlantic.
The Gulf Stream runs up to the Carolinas, where the Gulf Stream meets the Atlantic Conveyor.
Part of the Gulf Stream runs over to north Africa.

If the oil is not stopped and soon, it will end up on the beaches of Europe and Africa. In other words, yes, this may well turn into a world disaster of immense preportions and consequense.

BP did what any large corporation would do, meet the requirements in the regulations. The Congress of the US passed the laws and set forth the requirements. They were the police. The police were paid by those that they were supposed to be policing. The requirements did not fail, the police failed to properly require or protect. Do not listen to the absolute political BS about BP, that is a diversion. The fault here lies directly on the door step of the Congress and Obama was a prime mover in this entire episode as a senator and was a major recipiant of BP money..... he was in fact the largest recepiant of BP money and BP was the largest single contributor to his presidential campaign. That is a fact, local papers investigated his envolvement with BP.

If I was the rest of the world, I would be real pissed off at this point.
Ed

PS: Watching the attempts to save the Bays and Bayous is like watching a three stooges movie. County, puts booms out, state makes county remove them because the state does not like the layout, booms are repositioned. Feds arrive, pitch a fit, booms are removed again and oil is in the mean time running into the Bays. Makes you want to just line a bunch of "I am in charge" idiots up against a wall. O'BS arrives and must drive down the highway, all work stopps and everyone is evacuated because he might get his dumb ass shot, and half a day is lost so the AH can get a picture taken of him on the beach. If you did not come to shovel tar balls stay the Fu#* home.

[popplecop]

Put a wedding band around it and it will stop putting out.

[skeet]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Oh good grief PC...you are a trip. True though..

[Larryjk]

The big question of the investigation will have to be why did the BOP stack fail to activate. I believe there won't be any more deep drilling until they can say why the BOPs failed and what has been done to prevent it in the future. I don't know if they are set up like on-shore BOPs but those have three sets of rams: blind rams to close on an open hole (no drill stem in the BOP),pipe rams to close around the drill stem being used, and the top rams ( hydril, I think) that can close around whatever is through the BOPs.
On-shore the BOPs are activated by compressed air. I don't know about off-shore operations. But the MMS inspector should have in the inspection log definite comments about the BOP tests. If he doesn't have those comments, guess who is culpable.

[Jack]

Actually, the blowout preventer had a back up switch, which failed during a test a few weeks before the blowout. Instead of taking steps to remedy that, or shutting down until it was fixed, that problem was ignored.
In addition, during the same test a few weeks before the blowout, the rubber gasket that is supposed to shut down the well if something goes wrong, broke down. This was detected when chunks of rubber appeared in the drilling mud- and that was ignored, too.
BP actually isn't a very major player in political contributions, compared to many energy companies. BP spent 3.2 million in contributions, over the span of the last 20 years. Obama got 77, 000$ in contributions from BP, during that time. To put those numbers in some perspective, in the 2000 election cycle, Bush got 979,000$ from Enron.
The real lack of oversight on the oil companies can be traced to the MMA, (Minerals and Mining Agency) part of the department of the Interior. Officials at that agency were far too close to industry lobbyists, accepting gifts, etc. A lot of tests, safety procedures, etc, were let slide by those officials.
Congress can pass all the regulations it wants, but if they aren't enforced, they do no good.

[Larryjk]

Jack, Sounds like you have a heck of a lot more knowledge on that well than you say. Can't blame you. A close relative used to work for the company that deploys the remotes working on the well. I got to see the video of the well head the night the rig sank. This relative said I was probably about #50 to see the video.
If chunks of rubber were coming up in the returns, the hydril must not have released during a test. The need to rework the entire system. Drilling without a working BOP stack is like Russian roulette with all holes loaded and a hair trigger. I am sure they knew they were getting methane hydrate kicks and no one knew exactly how big a problem it was going to be to produce that stuff. USGS (head of MMS) had to know what was causing the problem, and yes!, someones head should roll for not shutting down the rig if the BOP stack wasn't functional.

[Rapier]

Jack,
If what you say is true, then BP appears to be guilty of Gross Negligence, willful and wanton disregard.
They may well be a walking dead corporation at this very moment. Gross Negligence is a back breaker for a corporation, it opens the flood gates under US tort law.

Our local papers might be walking down the primrose path, reporting all of this other stuff.
Ed

[Larryjk]

Before we pull the lever on the gallows BP is standing on, I want to see what the MMS inspectors log says about the BOP test he was supposed to observe. If he says it didn't pass the test, I want to know why he didn't give BP a shut down order to cure.

[Jack]

There's going to be a lot of butt covering, when the investigation into who, when, and why gets going. And lots of questions about the MMS inspectors- when were they there, what did they do, etc.
Also, BP isn't the only player. There was another company that owned the drilling platform (can't recall the name)- BP paid them - not sure whether they leased the platform, or exactly what the relationship was. And, of course, Halliburton is there in the mix, too- they were providing some services, again, I'm not sure exactly what.
Plenty of wiggle room for finger pointing between parties for a long time to come.

[Rapier]

Jack,
I sent your and Larry's comments to a friend in the oil drilling business, as an afiliated company owner. He actually had a bit more to say about the entire episode than we may have known. These are his comments:

"Most deep water BOP's have the following, 2 annular preventers or "Hydrills" one is part of the LMRP or lower marine riser package that can be disconnected from the main BOP stack in case of hurricanes where the rig wants to move away from the well and either leave the riser hanging under the rig or pull it out of the water.
The main BOPs usually consist of one more annular [two total] plus 3 pipe rams [2 half's with the centers designed to close and seal around either, 1 set size of drill pipe or VBR's that can close a range of pipe, plus one set of blind shears that are designed to either cut drill pipe and seal or just seal off the well bore.
Annulars, sometimes will have bits & pieces of the elements, kind of looks like a serrated doughnut break off,
BUT the point is there were 6 ways to seal off the well, and there were two independent systems used for functioning all the valves, etc. on the BOP's.
AND no one is stating this and asking what happened or why none of these systems were activated from one of at least 3 control panels ??
MMS rules call for a complete testing every 14 days, and that any problems must be corrected before drilling any deeper, UNLESS the operator gets written permission to continue operations from the MMS.
The rig owner Transocean was getting about $ 500,000.00 a day rent and they have never been shy about finding reasons to stop forward movement of the drilling operations. "

So it appears that if the pooch did not get properly mated, she sure missed a good chance!
Ed

[Jack]

Rapier, interesting stuff.
Transocean is the company name I couldn't recall. Thanks.