Simmons concluded BP’s ruptured well could flow for 25 to 30 years at a rate of 120,000 barrels a day.
120,000 barrels/day * 365 days/year * 25 years = 1.095 billion barrels.
To think that we all could have lost Blitzer during the first Iraq war... GHW Bush's fault!
Y’know when I’m looking for real expertise, the first place I go to is a guy who is not on site. The on-site facts might get in the way of a good panic.
Simmons is a well known doom-sayer and has been pushed out of the company he founded because of it. He is nothing more than a commentator on the oil industry and beyond that he has no expertise that I know of.
What they are doing down that hole is rocket science and Simmons does not have a clue as to what is happening.
ping
This is an interesting site...marine traffic...
Click on a vessel for more info...
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?level0=100
Keep raising the numbers, the herd isn't ready to jump into the abyss yet!
Some reality for the reality challenged.
The rocks and sediments on top of the producing reservoir have held the oil down there in place right up until the reservoir was drilled into.
Then, the drilling mud (replacing the pressure exerted by the rocks) in the hole held the reservoir fluid (oil and gas) in place until the cement plug was pumped in, which was supposed to do that job.
The cement plug failed, but the people who should have noticed that the plug was faulty apparently didn't, or their suprevisors ignored that, and they pumped off some of the drilling mud which was (still) holding the fluids in the reservoir, despite the bad cement plug.
That let the reservoir produce oil and gas to surface.
Unfortunately, before that could be controlled, the rig burned up and sank.
One of the tools used to bring that under control did not function in time to stop that: For some reason, either a previous state of repair, not enough time to actuate it, or damage which occurred when the rig sank, the BOP could not be actuated, even later by ROV.
Attempts to pump fluid in from the top, against the stream of oil and expanding gas coming up the wellbore, failed.
Now the way to put the lid back on, and shut the well in remains the relief wells, which can restore that column of heav(ier) drilling mud to shut the formation in. That does not require casing, just an inlet deep in the hole. Cement will seal against rock as well as steel (maybe even better), so a plug can be set which will plug the well.
As for an explosion, you need a couple of things to have one: fuel, which there is in abundance, and either oxygen or an oxidizer, which is absent, or there would not have been any oil down there in the first place.
I suppose our Governmental Panel of Experts could take a different route and stuff a nuke (no oxygen required) down there somewhere so we can a have big explosion and a really lasting disaster, but I'd hope they have better sense. Pray for their wisdom.
We need someone “for the small people” to actively demand to know, what in the H is going on? Ask even, is this a deliberate act of terrorism to destroy us
First there's a mega disaster portrayed on tv about a disaster in NYC that destroys big buildings. Then there's another one about a hurricane in the Gulf that goes up the center of New Orleans and takes it out. Now apparently there was a show on methane blowing up. What the H is going on, coincidence? Sure
The theory of diffraction-limited resolution in microparticle image velocimetry
***********************EXCERPT****************************
Carl D Meinhart 1 and Steven T Wereley 2
1 Department of Mechanical and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
2 School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, 585 Purdue Mall, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
Abstract
A theory of diffraction-limited spot size is developed for infinity-corrected microscope optics. Previously reported formulae were originally derived using a single-lens system. In addition, the previously reported relationship between f-number and numerical aperture assumed a paraxial approximation and was limited to air-immersion lenses. Here, a new relationship between f-number and numerical aperture is developed, and is valid for all numerical apertures and all immersion media. In addition, a new theory is developed that estimates the effective numerical aperture of an oil-immersion lens when imaging into fluid of a lower refractive index, such as water. The results indicated that when imaging into water, high numerical aperture NA = 1.0 or 1.2 water-immersion lenses provide comparable and sometimes better diffraction-limited resolution than NA = 1.4 oil-immersion lenses. In addition, when imaging into water, water-immersion lenses may provide superior image quality, because they are corrected for aberrations resulting from the water/glass interface.
BP makes massive oil find in deep Gulf of Mexico, reported Sept 2, 2009
BP's chief of exploration Wednesday estimated that the Tiber deposit holds between 4 billion and 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent, which includes natural gas.