BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Time is Not Our Friend - (Why gov. does not work)

The Oil Drum ^ | June 21, 2010 | Heading Out

[Marine_Uncle]

3:30AM was brutal. Limped to work. Hard day. Lots of idiots interupted every attempt at shelf maintenance and stocking. Alone for almost six hours in a very large department.
I am not going into all the stuff produced and shared since last night. But thanks for all the pings.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

What....is that about.??

[justa-hairyape]

Did not want to say anything earlier, but they appeared to be drilling the Relief Wells without any large BOPs. RW 2 was just basically a big drill pipe sticking in the ground when they surveyed it a few days ago. Not connected topside. The RW 1 appears to just have a small connector or mini circular BOP on its drill pipe. My guess is they are gonna put that BOP on RW 1 before they drill into the Wild Well bore. Do not know if drilling without BOPs is normal. Perhaps they did this for speed or perhaps they only install the BOP when they get close to pay dirt. BP has enough negative publicity now and they have a very important job to do here so I did not post about those potentially interesting observations earlier. Will check the tech briefings later.

[Smokin' Joe]

Thanks Ernest. You’ve been doing yeoman’s work trying to keep the nonsense from getting out of hand. Kudos to you, FRiend!

[justa-hairyape]

Nothing anywhere about the additional BOP. And now they just cut off all video feeds. Last thing I saw was the new BOP, what appeared to be a new well head cap and so many clathrate chunks traveling in the water it was hard to count them. My guess is that the BOP and Wellhead are for the Relief Well. Strange that they are pulling out of there when waves are not predicted to be that bad.

Guess it has to do with the wind speed, but right now it is only 35 mph.

[justa-hairyape]

Feeds are back.

[justa-hairyape]

Finally someone on The Oil Drum has posted a video documenting clathrate ejections and possible smokers. They are not certain of what they are looking at however. Posted by gmf from Oly2. Good shots but the video recording changed color from green to orange and flipped it upside down, but that does not alter the cool stuff. Note how all these ejections go in the same general direction. We can assume that is up. The ROV, if you flip this upside down, is looking down and back at the ejections. The bright objects are Clathrate (methane hydrate) ejections. They shoot out of the sediment. This is due to them being formed under the pressure of the sediment as the methane was rising. They get close to the surface and shoot out at varying speeds. Note the vapor trail they leave. Animal organisms do not leave vapor trails. Clathrate objects do because they are dissolving into the water. The smokers or plumers are very visible at the 3:26 mark. Going from the center to the upper left. Note they travel in the same direction. I have seen ROV take shots this way before. Basically looking down and back. Sometimes the ejections are dark, that could be due to lighting or due to a clathrate and oil mix. Dont see true oil seepage here. This is what I saw a couple of days ago only the Clathrate chunks were larger. Note how the ground flashes white when the clathrate chunk breaks the surface. That is the clathrate chunk breaking out. The vapor trails here are not as visible as they are in the greener and bluer lighting. Will be interesting to see how the Oil Drum crowd, which has been ignoring this for 3 days, handle the video.

Clathrate Ejections and a Smoker/Plumer

It makes sense that the Methane might separate out of the oil on the way up through the sediments ahead of the oil.

[justa-hairyape]

Here is the Oil Drum subthread. They got their first rebuttal. My response follows.

Oil Drum Thread

First response on the Oil Drum.

This is ROV thrust stirring up sediments. Here, look at my neat and clear video of oil seepage.

Look at the altitude. Double digit number. Physically impossible to be ROV thrust. The oil seepage video is the canned response. This is not a shallow oil deposit with leak through a crack. This is a deep, large, high pressure reservoir. Get it ?

PS - I do not have a posting account on the Drum and do not want one. Just too busy. And perhaps we all need to think about what this means. The seafloor is a breaching. BP/Obama have failed us big time.

[Marine_Uncle]

Good continue reporting. As Smokin Joe commended Ernest. I commend both of you for your continued deligence in helping keep many of us informed on all aspects of this spill.
Those few days I was able to communicate rather currently with you both on these issues came to a stop when I went back on a string of work days with variant time schedules.
So I have quite a bit of catching up on the past few days threads.
Yes I also noticed today the ROV's are back in action and some cams are on the air. And with the now passing storm it will be interesting as how quickly they get the RW cmt and final drilling under way.
Will we now see a reduced amount of particulate in the water as well as reduced clahrate generation yet remains to be seen. Perhaps there where sufficient strong under currents that where partly responsible for stiring up the bottom and allowing for more gas release the a few weeks back. Just a wild guess on my part that soon shall be proven totally wrong or perhaps partly right.
Time will tell.

[justa-hairyape]

Hate to break the news to you buddy, but see this thread.

Ships prepare to return to spill as storm weakens (Deepwater Horizon oilspill)

[Marine_Uncle]

Thanks. I read the article. Looks as if they will be able to within a week pick up the tempo to where it was prior to storm intervening. And the top kill process looks more and more like a reality as you had suggested should be done, last week.
Now. Will the gov give BP the blessing to go for the top kill this time around with little interference. They know the choke and kill lines can hack 8Kpsi plus so there should be little problem doing a top kill at present.

[justa-hairyape]

Yep, looks like prep for the Top Kill now. But we do have Clathrate ejections now in the ground near the BOP, so it is already a little late. Pushing the oil stack down a few miles, will push out oil product through the damaged casing. So ejections from the sea floor will increase because of that, assuming of course that the casing is damaged.

[Marine_Uncle]

I’m with ya on your concerns. Let us hope our assumptions on damage casings turns out to be not the case and that this is just one hell of a hot well site. But the problem of the clahrates cannot be ignored. We did not see this stuff weeks on back. BP may not be out of the woods even after the final bottom kill(s) are enacted. Hopefully I, you are wrong for everyone’s sakes.

[justa-hairyape]

If those indeed are Methane Hydrate chunks, it means at least that the gas is separating from the oil somewhere and is finding a way up. Now gas probably wont erode large channels, but some erosion is occurring. We do not want to see the oil make its way up and hopefully it wont. Have not seen any significant oil ejections from the seafloor, but will take another look when more ROVs arrive. And I guess even with oil flowing all around and clathrate projectiles flowing around, these darn ROVs can still get some work done. Also keeping an eye out for larger clathrate chunks or actual streams of methane bubbles coming out of the sea floor. We still got chance to stop this beast.

[Marine_Uncle]

I'm ready to hit the rack. I should have retired earlier due to tommorows work schedule. But spent about an hour at the TOD reading the latest. As you continue to stress, the clathrate problem is a real problem. It is indicative of sea floor leakage whether primarily gas or with some oil escaping.
To what extent it will guide or misguide the fed/BP in performing the top kill is yet in question. As some at TOD indicated (legal issues, etc.), the feds may have been forced into a position where BP can simply not give an opportunity to get current real flow conditions. No use going into it here. Tons of variant positions where voiced. One could side on either or middle extremes on those issues.
But it does come into play to see if a top kill would be 100% effective for a short term fix, with the understanding the well must be finally closed down completely.
I gotta hit the rack. Do have a great upcoming day. I have to work till 9PM tommorow.