Posted on 06/12/2010 7:53:15 PM PDT by Qbert
ORANGE BEACH, Ala. -- Extensive measures aimed at keeping the Gulf spill from penetrating Perdido Pass failed their first test early Wednesday as globs of hazardous oil rode a rising morning tide through the inlet and settled on beaches, bulkheads and grass beds in the city's inland water bodies.
"I'm mad," Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon told about 500 of his constituents during a midday public forum. "I'm absolutely sick to my stomach."
As slicks approached the pass overnight, city officials said they asked that heavy-duty boom strung across much of the pass be used to close off the inlet completely but were rebuffed by the U.S. Coast Guard. By midday the tide had reversed and oil-splotched water coursed back out of the basin toward the open Gulf and awaiting skimmer boats.
But the damage had been done.
Thick, sticky oil coated the brick-covered southern edge of Boggy Point, a stubby peninsula at the confluence of Cotton Bayou, Old River and Terry Cove that hosts a public boat launch. Neon boom that wrapped the basin's islands and sensitive submerged grass beds was stained the color of chocolate.
[Snip]
"There goes my flounder fishing," said Bob Wilson Jr., who lives in the Bear Point neighborhood adjacent to the private waterfront. Wilson said he first spotted the oil at about 10:30 a.m., and though he called the sighting into the Unified Command in Mobile, no one had been by for so much as a look four hours later.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.al.com ...
Something still seems amiss here: why would they need to take a sample after-the-fact to determine what type of crude is coming from the individual wells, when the EIA has supposedly been keeping track of all of the relevant data on crude sent to refineries for ages? I would think from a pricing standpoint alone, if the crude wasnt light crude that this shouldve been known before.
Bingo!
By either giving heat energy to the water or taking heat energy from the water. Knowing the temperature of a liquid product entering a biological environment can be an important metric if the temperature difference is significant. So we can assume there is no heating of the oil as it blows up through the well hole just prior to entering the ocean ?
Any suction that could be applied to any of the leaks in the riser would have been good to help reduce pressure form the other seeps, but they cut that off.
With hindsight, you can see most everything they did was making things worse.
Good points. One thing is this wasn’t a production well. It was an exploratory well (though they planned on pumping it later). So maybe the EIA hadn’t been tracking it or something. Or, maybe BP and the EIA knew it was heavy crude and that the skimmers would be ineffective. Maybe that’s why they declined the offer of the skimmers.
The temperature of the oil will actually drop as it goes from high to low pressure (that’s why they had trouble with ice crystals in the cap), and it will pull heat from the nearby water which will cool it. But the mass of the oil is miniscule compared to that of the surrounding sea, and the cooling of the water will be insignificant, except in a very localized way. If you put a drop of cold oil into a bucket of water, the temperature doesn’t change much.
“Maybe thats why they declined the offer of the skimmers.”
The official silence on this matter is still troubling to me if that’s the rationale. And it seems odd that the Coast Guard (along with BP), would reject the skimmers, and then at a much later date, try to use skimming techniques.
I’m guessing that we know why BP would likely reject any supertanker skimmer idea involving whatever they have for their own fleet- because the cost would exceed their legal liability cap. And at any rate, it would seem that If BP were deemed incorrect in their assumptions about cleanup methods, they should just be overruled by the Feds- but it doesn’t seem clear who gets the final decision in calling the shots here. And why would the Feds reject the offers of 17 other nations? As I understand it, there is a shortage of supertankers, and thus employing them into the Gulf for cleanup purposes would disrupt oil delivery, which would in turn drive up prices. Skyrocketing gas prices would have a deleterious effect on an already fragile economy (and thus, the administration may be choosing economic concerns over oil spill disaster and coastline protection concerns). Is this what the silence is about?
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