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

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

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Based on the premise that oil and methane, NG are lighter than water...anything consisting of those compounds should be seen ascending toward the surface....

That I do NOT see.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Haven’t heard about that ...thanks.

[Marine_Uncle]

E. The web site JAHA sites a few threads above (Upper Crust) does appear to show some real methane/gas leaks occuring.
They may be quite small but never the less do seem to be real.
Of course we could counter and say they seem extremly small compared to the huge gush of oil/gas we had last week. And maybe this will be the extent of them for some time.
A few gallons per hour means nothing. If it is not indicative that some larger leak may start. As we understand the Gulf sea bed emits one heck of a lot of oil/gas on a daily basis.
On that basis I am not becoming an alarmist. Simply reporting what appears to be happening on the main system.
With that. I am going to hit the rack. Hope you figure out how best to use the new printer. Nighty nite.

[justa-hairyape]

Not seeing NG and oil yet. The oil products have to push out the sedimentary channels first, then we should be seeing more of the oil products over time. Anytime you move sediments laterally underwater, you get turbidity. So I am assuming the same happens vertically. Gonna take a while to move through a few miles of sediments. All makes sense, so far. Pressure from rising oil products pushing out sedimentary turbidity as there clear out vertical channels.

[justa-hairyape]

One other point, after traveling a few miles through the sediments, the oil products will become intermixed with the sediment. Not gonna initially see the clean type of flow we got out of the stack. We eventually will, if a large enough vertical channel gets carved out, but by then you might as well pack up the ROVs and go home. At any rate, the first large smoke plume I saw was rising and being bent by the current. Rising slowly, but still rising high off the bottom.

[justa-hairyape]

Also, do you know of any site arching the video feeds from BP for search and later review ? The Feds have to be and so must BP. Wonder if any independents are archiving ?

[justa-hairyape]

change...arching...to...archiving

Asking for BP ROV archives ?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just found this on the Oil Drum:

MoonofA on July 21, 2010 - 9:15am Youtube of a real Oil Seep

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For all folks who see "oil seeping" in the silt storms the ROVs are causing, here is a video of a real oil-seep so you know what you should be looking for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4S9uazWAB0

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And the stuff goes UP!!!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

This one looks much different...and it is not like the one just above:

ROV filming crack/oil seep on sea floor?

[justa-hairyape]

I posted that oil seep link earlier today. See my above response about the sedimentary smokers. The seep is definitely not what I saw. We are not dealing with a shallow seep through a crack here. We have a monster coming up slowly through the sediments, theoretically of course. Sure would be nice to have a video archive with the high res stuff. Granted bandwidth is an issue for the live feeds. But it should not be an issue for any public archival of the video feeds.

[justa-hairyape]

Never saw that video, but it looks like nothing. What I saw were smokers. Feet tall and maybe up to 1 foot wide.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

And from TOD and Simmons is floating new comments....scroll down for all of the subthread:

beachmommy on July 21, 2010 - 11:35am

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LOL about the 1000 ft Tsunami, I like the 5-6 ft waves myself....I have been trying to inform and debunk, although Matt Simmons was just on bloomberg and I only caught part of the massive oil lake 10 miles away, but did find this one yesterday:

There has been a fluctuation in the sea floor for several days of over seven feet... It rises and falls like a pulse, indicating that there is "something" underneath trying to escape... I wonder if it will be another 3-4 weeks before we hear THAT on the MSM

I also found the short info on BP and posted yesterday on the open thread, not sure what percentage were naked shorts though.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Look at the Enterprise ROV2 feed!!!

There’s 8 separate streams heading straight up the picture. And not just white whispy things. they are different colors, and the one on the right is black like oil. It’s scary how straight these streams are, although I have to admit the colors are cool.....

Oh wait, that’s a test pattern. Never mind.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From the Oil Drum:

crab under the sea, at the bp oil spill

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Careful now....

[justa-hairyape]

This is how I think the game works Ernie. The government uses someone to leak a fantastical worse case scenario. These typically appear on Coast 2 Coast or some other such venue. The sole purpose of these worse case scenarios, is to condition the public so that the real truth wont be a shock. We just went through that. The Feds suddenly stated there is a seep near the well. Within 24 hours that seep story was negated by the report that it was determined to be a natural seep 2 miles from the well. WITHIN 24 HOURS ! How is that possible ? It was all a setup to condition the public not to panic when the real truth was released. IE - We have 2 seeps near the well. So Simmons is being used by the Feds to condition the public to not be shocked by the truth. IMHO.

[justa-hairyape]

The Oil Drum crowd gets the Crab video, but not the smoker video ?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I guess.....this is a subthread with Bruce and Rockman into cement and etc...some noise about colour filters...

Bruce Thompson on July 21, 2010 - 10:28am

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There was a question directed to me near the end of the last thread about the two differing drawings showing the fluid state in the well from the USCG investigation.

The first one is dated April 15,2010 http://www.deepwaterinvestigation.com/go/doc/3043/795971/

The second is dated April 18, 2010 http://www.deepwaterinvestigation.com/go/doc/3043/795991/

I am not an expert on cementing (Rockman?) but I do have a few observations.

They show different elapsed times and volumes of fluids pumped. Why that is so is an interesting question. Note also that the presumably revised drawing (4/18/10) shows less fluid pumped (11 barrels less) over a longer time frame (6 minutes longer).

If you want to follow along here are some hints to reading the drawings.

The table of fluids pumped shows the sequence with Macondo 9-7/8' x 7" Prod Casing - 14.17 ppg being the mud that was in the well for pressure control. It would go down through the production casing in the center of the well and then flow out the bottom and make a U-turn and flow upward through the annulus. Next was the 6.7 ppg Base Oil Maconndo etc.

The fourth and fifth are the cement, Macondo Foamed Slurry 16.74 ppg (Magenta) and Macoondo Foamed Slurry 16.74 (?) (Yellow). Where they flow out of the bottom of the production casing and make the U-turn is the "shoe". There is some green shown between the shoe and the hole on the later drawing.

The primary issue is how the cement job was done, so these anomalies in the data might prove critical to understanding the failure. Here is the Halliburon briefing http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100614/Halliburton.EC.Staff....

Somewhere along the line I remember seeing a speculation that the cement might have failed to make a tight seal at the shoe because there was more volume to fill than cement pumped. I don't think there should be any green around the cement as in the second drawing, it should be all yellow as in the first one.

Rockman it's your turn.

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Scroll down aways thru the noise to find Rockman's comments.

[justa-hairyape]

They had numerous problems during the drilling process. It was called a nightmare well by one of the professionals involved. That says enough. Going through the particulars of how each one of about 5-6 well problems occurred, will probably takes years and many lawyers.

[justa-hairyape]

FYI - Oly ROV 2 has been focused on what could be a small black plume. Very difficult to tell with the very high turbidity the water currently has. Sure hope that is not the first signs of oil/sediment. Has 3 dimensional character and changes shape.