Posted on 05/14/2010 3:44:36 AM PDT by tobyhill
For a spill now nearly half the size of Exxon Valdez, the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is pretty hard to pin down.
Satellite images show most of an estimated 4.6 million gallons of oil has pooled in a floating, shape-shifting blob off the Louisiana coast. Some has reached shore as a thin sheen, and gooey bits have washed up as far away as Alabama. But the spill is 23 days old since the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and killed 11 workers, and the thickest stuff hasn't shown up on the coast.
So, where's the oil? Where's it going to end up?
Government scientists and others tracking the spill say much of the oil is lurking just below the surface. But there seems to be no consensus on whether it will arrive in black waves, mostly dissipate into the massive Gulf or gradually settle to the ocean floor, where it could seep into the ecosystem for years.
When it comes to deepwater spills, even top experts rely on some guesswork..............
Of that recovered mixture, at least 10 percent is oil, BP and NOAA said. Smaller amounts of oil also have been collected after washing ashore, and crews have burned a negligible quantity off the surface
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Or be “under the service”
It's sad to think they have progressed to blatant stupidity
I dont know. I remember hearing back then that there was a bacteria that would eat oil. That surprised me because I thought of the oil as being like the motor oil you put in a car and could only imagine that that kind of oil would kill bacteria and anything else.
Yeah, I guess there are natural occurring leaks all the time. That surprised me also.
Sounds like my brother-in-law.
Where is H1N1?
vob
No, it was crude. But oils vary very widely as to the mix of hydrocarbons they contain. Some has a lot of short-chain hydrocarbons, some has a lot of long-chain hydrocarbons. "Light crude" means it has more "gasoline-like" (short-chain). "Heavy crude" has more "tar-like" (long-chain). "Light crude" is easier to refine, "heavy crude" harder.
"This oil is a natural substance. Aren’t there naturally occurring oil leaks all the time?"
Yes.
Maybe it’s “dark” oil......................
Now, if someone had discovered a hole on the bottom of the ocean gushing oil, it would have been called a natural wonder and a source of free oil just awaiting the technological ingenuity to harness it for our use. There are hundreds of them. Oil naturally seeps int the gulf all the time. Check this photo out, by NASA form May 13, 2006! The streaks you see are NATURAL OIL SLICKS...........
May 13, 2006...........
In 1979, Mexico's Ixtoc I in the western Gulf blew out and spewed about 420,000 gallons of oil a day for nine months. Large quantities of oil did not reach Texas beaches.
"This was a problem we ran into with Ixtoc, we never found the oil,"
Where are you getting only 10% oil?
The bottomof the gulf is bubbling oil constantly. Nobody writes about that,,there is constant oil leaking in the gulf.
People tend to forget that RAW PETROLEUM contains EVERYTHING that comes form oil in it. Gasoline, Diesel, Kerosene, Benzene, machine oil, etc...........It mostly just evaporates...
That is a really interesting and eye opening graph. I am curious what feedstocks is.
Raw material used in production of plastics and other manufacturing processes...........
I do remember reading an article recently, that said oil released naturally far exceeds any leakage caused by rigs. I mean, yeah, this is certainly a gusher, but it is a natural substance. It hasn’t been altered yet, so it seems to me that nature has built in safeguards.
See #27 and 29...................
In my mind, with tens of millions of acres of land mass excluded from oil exploration and drilling, wouldn’t land based drilling rigs be much easier to contain in a mishap? Would there be far less environmental impact overall in developing on shore oil resources?
I know that placing the oil platforms just beyond eyesight are intended for the out of sight aesthetics. But I would rather see something completely within control, then a mile below the ocean in freezing, dark waters.
Considering all the oil wells exploded by Saddam in Gulf War 1, there is no way the environmental impact of all those wells burning, that this one offshore oil rig disaster will have on American Gulf Coast fishing and tourism industries. An impact that could last for decades.
Drill onshore baby!
Usually refers to crude oil or a petroleum based 'fluid' like oil sands. Its some thing that will undergo processing (like removing sulfur) to become a finished product like gasoline or diesel fuel.
“Rush was right” ~ tobyhill
Where Is All the Oil on Shore?
May 13, 2010
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_051310/content/01125116.member.html
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Pam in Lafayette, Louisiana, great to have you, thank you for waiting. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s an honor to be talking to you.
RUSH: Thank you so much.
CALLER: Yes, I just wanted to make a comment about Dauphin Island and people going to lower Alabama wanting to volunteer. No one loves the beach more than the locals, okay? They make their living there, they love their surroundings. I went past an island this weekend and they had a bunch of the vacuum trucks, everybody’s all ready should any oil come to shore, they’re all ready for it, and I’m not meaning to be ugly to these eighth graders, but there’s very limited roads in Dauphin Island. If those trucks need to move and stuff, I find that those eighth graders probably would hurt their effort to help the area, as opposed to help it. Also, in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach and so forth and a lot of the hotels along the coast and a lot of the restaurants, they’re getting a lot of cancellations due to the media coverage. Well, there’s no oil on the beach. It’s business as usual. It’s great down there. I had lunch with a gentleman from Gulf Shores on Sunday, and he was telling me that they had called on the locals of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach to come down and just kind of clean up the beach and make sure any obstructions are out of the way, and so that if anything were to happen they would be ready to roll.
RUSH: Now, I know I’m going to get raked over the coals for this. Snerdley and I were just talking about this at the top of the hour. How many weeks have we been awaiting Armageddon?
CALLER: I’m telling you —
RUSH: How many weeks —
CALLER: — hurts these merchants.
RUSH: How many weeks have we been waiting for the entire southern coast and the East Coast of Florida to be drenched in oil? We’re supposed to by now have seen thousands of dead birds and pelicans, all of it covered in black gold, and so far, so far it’s not an event. I know it still could be, and I know the media is hoping it still will be, but it isn’t yet. I mean there’s one dead dolphin, they found some sea turtles, but they don’t know why. We don’t have dead birds yet. We don’t have any of that. Now they’re talking about it going to Texas.
CALLER: Can you believe this? So I guess everybody’s going to have to cancel Texas. But please, don’t cancel those reservations, talk to the locals, talk to the restaurants, please keep their economy rolling. Everything is good, it’s beautiful down there, enjoy the beach. Let’s just say you couldn’t go to the beach. There are so many things you can do in the area. Please help our fellow merchants stay in business.
RUSH: As usual, it’s average citizens against State-Controlled Media.
CALLER: Well, that’s right. And you know what happened to them in Gulf Shores after the locals cleaned the beach and everything? They had some buses from Birmingham that showed up wanting to clean the beach and the locals are like, “The beach is clean, what are you all doing here? Go home.” They took trash out of the trash cans and put it on the beach and made like they were cleaning.
RUSH: Typical.
CALLER: That’s sad.
RUSH: No, it is sad, but it’s also quite typical. Look, I’m glad you called.
END TRANSCRIPT bttt
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