Posted on 07/21/2010 6:38:18 AM PDT by Hojczyk
There is a certain frustration in hearing some of the officials who act as spokesmen for the management team handling the spill from the Deepwater well in the Gulf of Mexico. Their evaluation of the situation is bound around a full collection and compilation of the existing evidence, a comprehensive and contemplative understanding through a scientific explanation of the causes of whatever anomalies and other behavior that is not following the model anticipated, and subsequently then working out the best steps forward and determining the potential benefits relative to alternative approaches.
(Excerpt) Read more at theoildrum.com ...
Just letting you all know what happened during the night again. Oly 2 is currently showing what appear to be methane bubbles occasionally rising. They almost look like rockets, since they can leave a trail. They head in one direction and do not stop. Sometimes they become dark colored on the way up due to lighting effects. Normally silver white colored. They leave a trail that looks like gas shimmer in water. The shimmer persists for a few seconds. So I do not think they are those sediment mud creatures that we have seen rise out of the sediments before. The ROV is following them as they rise from various sea floor locations and travel upward. Trying to get good focus on them is difficult since they move fairly quick. Also looks like there is wreckage in the area so this may be where parts of the old drill rig fell. Location is NW of BOP. Depth is 4984 feet. Bubbles rising at the rate of one every 1 to 2 seconds per video display area. The bubbles do not appear to be increasing in size on the way up. Could be due to the trail left behind. Perhaps they are partially dissolving into the seawater ? The ground is also flashing white occasionally in spots and that could be where the bubble breaks through.
These are definitely not mud creatures, every single bubble takes the same path in relation to the ROV point of view. Individual creatures can typically travel in different pathways.
Question on methane hydrates from a non-chemist. Is it possible that methane hydrate snow balls mixed with a little sediment and some oil could be releasing from the deep sea floor ? Assuming of course that some of the Macondo Reservoir would be leaking up through the sediments. We are now seeing some almost neutrally buoyant possible methane hydrate snow balls moving horizontal in the current. They are probably being held down with a sediment mix. Size of these horizontal ones moving in the flow is probably smaller then the ones I mentioned above that moved straight up like a rocket. The horizontal hydrate balls appear to move up and down with the current, leave a long vapor like trail and can kinda disintegrate all of a sudden. Is that possible ? See Oly 2 right now at post time with possible snowballs mixed with some distinct lifeforms moving right to left in the up and down current flow. We seem to possibly be seeing more of these methane hydrate dirty snowballs in the current. Later.
Well, it sure seems like most of what he is saying is absurd, he seemes to think there’s a whole other well somewhere that blew up that they aren’t showing us, while the BOP we see here was actually displaced from the real well, and is just stuck in the mud pushing out residual gas products. Or something like that.
But so long as he keeps saying that the toxic oil and toxic methane are sitting on the floor of the GOM, we can pretty much discount everything else he is saying.
[-] locked on July 22, 2010 - 3:58pm
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Feel free to copy and past this letter and send it to any news outlet. I sent it to about 1500 emails yesterday, and was able to read most of it on Washington Journal this morning on Cspan. Hopefully it will be a small piece of the truth coming out.
To whom it may concern,
Matthew R. Simmons - Chairman Emeritus of Simmons & Company International was on the Dylan Ratigan show on MSNBC on July 15th making some VERY inflammatory claims about a BP cover up, and possible government cover-up of the true scope of the oil disaster. He just was on [link to kingworldnews.com] , and restated his claims in more detail.
He is calling for "the arrest of BP executives", and stating that there is "a hole spewing 120,000 barrels of oil a day where the 1st BOP use to be". This man is not a fringe character and has been on many main stream media shows during the disaster. His Wikipedia page shows hes a member of the Council On Foreign Relations. Plain and simple he is exposing a massive cover-up by BP, and possibly the government about the real extent of this disaster, or fear mongering to further his/others agenda while calling for the "arrest" of BP executives. The truth is somewhere out there.
[link to en.wikipedia.org]
Stories and interviews without softballs are crucial to the security and psychology of the United States, his claims need to be proven or disproven.
Sincerely,
Another thing that is easy to miss interpret is when a squiddy is lifting a cable and running it across the floor to find the other end. That can cause disturbance that can confuse everyone. But let me lay out what I think has occurred up to this morning at 5 am PST. Pure conjecture and it is posted here for future reference.
Possible Early Signs of Sea Floor Breaching at Macondo
Tuesday morning 7/20/2010 - (1 Week from Shut In) Long funnel plume found. Rising from sea floor and bending in water current. Possible source was 4 white smokers coming from floor.
Tuesday evening 7/20/2010 - Starting to notice up and down current movement. Has not been seen much prior to this. Kinda rare at this depth. Possible gray smokers seen on some ROVs. Difficult to notice due to very turbid water.
Wednesday morning 7/21/2010 - Seeing more smokers, but not rising as much as first smokers. Acting as if heavier sediments are pluming upward and staying close to floor.
Wednesday Evening 7/21/2010 - See a small plume with a back top cap. Appears to be sediments and oil pluming up. Sediments fall and oil rises. Basically a sediment and oil physical separation process. Then see on another ROV two holes with heavy plumes or smoke rolling below them apparently toward the downward slope.
Thursday morning 7/22/2010 - See what appear to be Methane Bubbles or Dirty Methane Hydrate Snow Balls lifting from the sediments and traveling upward in distinct common vectors. They leave what appears to be a vapor trail and that gives them a rocket-like appearance. These are believed to be medium sized.
Thursday morning 7/22/2010 - Begin to realize that smaller Methane Hydrate Snowballs could be traveling more horizontal and following the water current. These also leave trails and can just disintegrate or dissolve.
Note - It is entirely that some of these observations are normal processes that occur in the area. To verify this we need to be able to have access to the high res video archives. Then we could compare the sea floor activity piror to Shut In and after Shut In.
Do they really need to “prove or disprove” the contention that there is a 2nd well with a 2nd BOP which blew out?
Is it just that the claim is so far out there that you simply cannot ignore it? Like the BIG lie that is so big you think it must be true?
It never ceases to amaze me how many people believe such a conspiracy could actually be kept silent from any rational observer, while it would somehow be revealed to a nut-job.
I guess if you have to “disprove it”, the “no easy oil found to skim in the last days” is a pretty obvious one. If there was an entire other well spewing oil at 3 times the rate of this one, the oil wouldn’t have gone away just because we capped this one for a week.
It appears the folks at TOD do not think highly of this individual and his rantings.
Some commentary going on the TOD subthread.
beachmommy on July 22, 2010 - 4:35pm
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Listening to Van Niewenhuise on BBERG and he's refuting Matt Simmons.......wich I could get this link from the BBERG to my laptop because it's a good one, but not able to link it..
ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES -- New Option to Seal Oil Well; Aired July 19, 2010 - 23:00 ET
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Don, what do you think the chances are that this thing's going to work?
DONALD VAN NIEWENHUISE, GEOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON: This can definitely work. And the way it works -- Chad explained it extremely well -- and what's different here is, in the first case, we had pressure that was active. It was dynamic, pushing on that mud and pushing it out, just as Chad said.
Now, in this case, the pressure is static. It's not moving. It's high pressure. But if you can get the mud into -- let's call that -- the wellbore a vessel, so to speak, that has 6,800 pounds per square in it. Once you get the mud into that vessel, the weight of the mud will fall to the bottom of that static pressure control. And once it gets down there and starts to build up, it will displace the oil from the bottom up. And when it does that, it's heavier than the oil and the gas, as Chad pointed out.
And, as it does that, it will actually kill the pressure, and the pressure at the surface where the cap is will be much, much lower, something on the order of 2,500 to 4,500 PSI, instead of 6,800 PSI. So, at the end of the day --
COOPER: So, what are the big risks, Don?
VAN NIEWENHUISE: There really isn't any risk at this point. The biggest issue that concerns me is that, earlier today, we were told that those flow lines wouldn't handle 6,800 PSI. And now we've been told that -- that they will actually handle that much pressure.
Let me drop this link :
Professor: Low pressure reading may suggest well has lost power, not that it's leaking
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Published: Friday, July 16, 2010, 12:19 PM Updated: Friday, July 16, 2010, 3:43 PM
Jaquetta White, The Times-Picayune Jaquetta White, The Times-Picayune
As a team of scientists works to interpret pressure readings inside the blown-out Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, a geologist who has been following the gusher said a pressure reading of lower than the 8,000 to 9,000 pounds per square inch target that officials have said they are hoping for does not necessarily indicate bad news.
The 6,700 pound- per-square inch pressure reading logged inside the blown-out Macondo well this morning may suggest that the well has lost power over the almost three-month-long period it has flowed into the Gulf of Mexico and not that the well is leaking somewhere beneath the sea floor, a geologist who has been following the gusher said.
The reservoir could have "deflated" since it began leaking April 20, reducing the amount of pressure it is capable of producing, said Don Van Nieuwenhuise, Director of the Professional Geoscience Programs at the University of Houston.
ROV - Oly 2 showing small black smoker (right upper center) and what appear to be falling methane hydrate ice balls. Looks like they are being spit out from some where in the upper back area and then falling forward.
Guess it was still readable though.
First we saw the back and forth horizontal currents that seemed to start occurring after the Shut In. Perhaps it was just rare and coincidental. But now we are seeing stronger vertical up and down, which should be very rare for that depth. I can see the smokers, plumes, sediment outflows and now Methane Ice Crystal anomalies as helping to develop some strange currents down there. Sure hope the BOP and stack does not start getting pelted with these methane ice balls. Might damage some equipment. Today we witnessed the new phenomenon of horizontally ejected methane ice rocket balls. Will have to add that one to the list.
Also starting to note the lack of life now. We mostly see the methane balls leaving their vapor trails. Perhaps the animals are fleeing the methane.
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