Anyone can downplay this as much as they want to but there is somewhere in the range of 50,000 barrels of oil daily flowing into the Gulf.
It has made its way into the Gulf Stream (first time in my life I have heard it referred to as the “current loop”) where it will devastate beaches and reefs around Cuba and the Florida keys and then end up near Iceland on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
We best hope they figure out how to get it stopped before August. The Russians are concerned enough about it that they are suggesting that a bore hole be put down next to the well and detonate a small nuclear weapon in it to crush the well off and stop the flow, a technique they say they have used 5 time in the past to stop out of control wells.
Zero and his thugs are running cover for BP, there is no telling what the real truth is. He could care less because he is out to destroy the country anyway
This is not your run of the mill oil spill.
Oh yeah, the Russians have a stellar track record when it comes to environmental remediation. NOT!
First off, this isn't a "spill", it is a blowout.
Second, there have been blowouts before, and according to the current crop of environmentalists, we all died.
Oh wait, that didn't happen, did it?
Google the Ixtoc well blowout in 1979, which was worse (even if it happened further south) and went on for 9 months before the well was shut in.
BP has two relief wells being drilled now. One spudded on the 4th of May, one on the 17th, and the estimate of time to complete those wells to intersect the existing wellbore on this one at 16000 ft depth is roughly 90 days. It may take more, it may take less, but that is still one third of the time it took to bring the Ixtoc under control.
What I don't get is that everyone is dashing hither and yon howling about nuking the well, when no one is bringing up that that might cause a pressure wave in the reservoir, like a super frac, which might rupture tha caprock and make things worse.
Right now there is one well, out of control. Imagine how much fun it would be to have a dozen high pressure seeps which have no casing, no place to attach a wellhead, and no wellbore to try to drill into with a relief well.
Where do you get the 50,000 bbl of oil per day figure, anyway? (Most of the very best oil wells in the world only produce about 1/5 of that, and this one hasn't even been fracced.)