Posted on 06/13/2010 6:39:37 PM PDT by GonzoII
As I noted Tuesday, there is growing evidence that BP's oil well - technically called the "well casing" or "well bore" - has suffered damage beneath the level of the sea floor.
The evidence is growing stronger and stronger that there is substantial damage beneath the sea floor. Indeed, it appears that BP officials themselves have admitted to such damage. This has enormous impacts on both the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf, and the prospects for quickly stopping the leak this summer.
On May 31st, the Washington Post noted:
Sources at two companies involved with the well said that BP also discovered new damage inside the well below the seafloor and that, as a result, some of the drilling mud that was successfully forced into the well was going off to the side into rock formations.
"We discovered things that were broken in the sub-surface," said a BP official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said that mud was making it "out to the side, into the formation."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonsblog.com ...
Thanks. Not good no matter what.
Okay - here’s one last article that I found awhile ago on the Ixtoc (Mexican) well that blew out in 1979. I am not sure on the rate per day that it gushed, but I think it is in the ballpark of the BP “spill”. But it was not some minor spill.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/01/gulf-oil-spill-ixtoc-ecological-tipping-point
But although Ixtoc was a big disaster, it did not develop into the long-term catastrophe that scientists initially thought was inevitable.
“This is not to say there were no consequences. Just that the evidence is that these are not as dramatic as we feared,” says Luis Soto, a marine biologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “After about two years the recuperation was well on the way.”
Wes Tunnell, now at the Texas Harte Research Institute, took samples before and after the oil arrived in Texas that showed an immediate 80% drop in the number of organisms living between the grains of sand that provide food for shore birds and crabs.
“Sampling a couple of years after the spill indicated the populations were back to normal,” he says. Six years after Ixtoc 1 exploded it was hard to find any evidence of the oil, he says. “It is rather baffling to us all. We don’t really know where it went.”
But although their message is hopeful, those who studied the Ixtoc disaster warn against assuming the gulf is automatically heading for another quick comeback.
Ixtoc 1 stood in just 50 metres (165ft) of water, while Deepwater Horizon was drilling 1,500 metres below the surface. It is also likely that the quantity of chemical dispersants being used today is significantly larger, potentially blocking the work of the oil-eating micro-organisms.
But what worries Tunnell most is that over-fishing may have reduced the ability of the gulf to bounce back. “It was much more resilient 30 years ago than today. My fear is it is reaching a tipping point.”
I believe the relief wells have a margin of error of hitting the right spot. That’s why they’re drilling two.
Hopefully they won’t both miss.
“Not good no matter what.”
No. Even if they got it stopped tomorrow (which they won’t) it is a huge disaster. But, I hope not as great as they/we/I fear.
I finally found the web site where I watched a video that was taped early on in the oil disaster and posted at the link on May 5. I put the link on a thread which posed the question, Did BP drill into an oil volcano? Every, including me, laughed at the eco moonbat that made this video. Funny thing is, it doesn’t seem so whacked out now. Wonder how she knew there was more to this way back then? It is quite odd given what has come out since then. Have a look:
You are correct. If they are close enough they should be able to frac into the original wellbore. If not, it is going to take longer. With near-bit survey tools and some of the newer steerable drilling assemblies, the odds are far greater than they would have been only a decade ago.
Just saw this little bit of info I hadn't seen before:
Cement plug 12,150 ft SCMT logging tool SCMT (Slim Cement Mapping Tool) Schlumberger Partial CBL done. http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100530/BP-HZN-CEC018441.pdf
Looks like Schlumberger did attempt to run a CBL, but stuck it. Don't know if they attempted to fish for it, push it to bottom or leave it there.
Looks like they did not attempt another CBL run and decided to set the plug higher. Would be interesting to see what they could have hung up on or for that matter what the CBL log they did get looks like.
I don't think so, nature has an amazing way of healing itself. There've been other spills in the gulf before. there's natural oil seeps all over the place that haven't killed off life as we know it. We'll get past this, too.
The way I hear it; if you nuke it, you could succeed in closing well bore itself, but end up fracturing the surrounding bedrock and creating an even bigger mess than the one we have now. Imagine trying to stop 1000’s of seeps.
Ny LORD, the Gulf is gonna sink!!!!
We’re just running out of good descriptors...
I was chatting this morning with legal...and they said considering how sneaky and deceitful this administration has been concerning the pulling the switch on the 75 million damage cap...no wonder everyone in the industry has turned their back on helping the residents along the Gulf coast...because of the THUG "federal government" skulking around looking for more revenue to steal from future O&G victims. Poetic justice that the "crisis" the lawyers in DC thought they needed to lawyer their way into revenue has bit them in the ass.... Lawyers will be, in the end, the biggest impediment to getting this crisis resolved...
If you ask me, the dispersements is for appearance sake only. It doesn’t LOOK as bad as globs of oil washing up. I have had a few Freepers tell me the dispersements are perfectly harmless, but then I have read that no one has EVER used this much (over one millions gallons so far) at one time. People are already becoming sick on the Gulf shores from the hydrogen sulfide. I just don’t know. I hear on the right that everything is fine and I’m sure it will be. Then I hear hysteria from some pretty respectable people that this is disaster beyond our imagination. I just don’t know what to do. I live in Georgia and this could effect us since 90% of our weather systems come up from the gulf stream.
What I mean is that millions of years ago, a meteor hit in the Gulf of Mexico causing a very large crater next to the Mexican shoreline releasing a large amount of hydrogen sulfides into the atmosphere. According to geologists in 2004 taking rock samples, the earth was covered in hydrogen sulfides that coincided with the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Now we have dug down into a very precarious area that is ALSO on the New Madrid fault. Worst case scenario could be far worse than cleaning up some oil on a beach and people losing their jobs.
Oh, and the last time the New Madrid fault had a major earthquake (1812), the Mississippi River changed direction...
THIS is what enviro-weenies do instead of pitching in to clean up the mess! What a bunch of worthless a**es! Imagine if these 200 plus strong people had of gathered on the beaches for just one day to help! Lazy jerks!
http://www.breitbart.tv/nude-bike-riders-take-on-big-oil/
Warning: some brief painted over nudity...
No, they hear a blurb that “oil is still flowing” and see a few oil soaked birds and think it’s sad, but no big deal. “Just like Exxon Valdez, someone will clean it up” but they do not grasp the potential nightmare this could be for not just birds and pretty beaches.
Oh yeah, and people tend to forget so quickly that man caused another natural disaster that crippled the midwest. I haven’t met many people who knew that the Dustbowl was manmade.
Not sure when I’ll get to even half of all that.
My convictions at this point are:
1. The globalists/communists/socialists are extremely capable of doing the worst imaginable and have much more far worst planned.
2. Whether they deliberately did this as the purported report from the sailor says from suppoosedly the sub responsible, or not . . . I don’t know. It’s not beyond possibility.
3. Whether they deliberately did it or not, they will do everything they can to make use of the disaster to
A) decrease population numbers;
B) cause chaos, fear, horror, confusion, discord;
C) hasten the day when overt martial law grips as much of the country as they can get away with. Perhaps they will start with the coast because of the disaster.
Hydrogen sulphide is extremely deadly. In our region, folks have to wear serious masks when working around wells drilling into it.
And, if the quakes get at all active around La Plata, Durango Colorado etc, likely those whole populations will be dead fairly instantly from hydrogen sulphide.
They’d have done it to leap-frog over the green junk.
They are heading more directly to greatly increased global tyranny overtly.
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