They should convert to wind power then.
Posted on 04/23/2010 12:50:45 AM PDT by KDD
A drilling rig that burned for more than a day before sinking Thursday has fouled Gulf of Mexico waters with a potentially major spill of crude oil, officials said. The collapse of the oil rig could disgorge up to 336,000 gallons of crude a day into waters about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said the sunken rig, the Deepwater Horizon, increased the threat for environmental damage, which previously appeared minimal. With new challenges from the collapsed rig, a growing assemblage of cleanup crews began to work in the area, hoping to stop the oil before the spill were to reach the shore.
Meteorologists predicted a change in the Gulf's current today that would push the oil toward the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines. But Landry said the spill isn't expected to reach the coast. “We have the ability to keep it offshore,” she said. BP, the oil company that leased the offshore rig, said it had mobilized four aircraft that can spread chemicals to break up the oil and 32 vessels that can recover more than 171,000 barrels of oil a day from the surface. BP officials also expected to have a million feet of boom in place to help contain the spill by today. “We have contingency plans in place to respond to any anticipated situation, and the full resources of BP are being mobilized to implement those plans,” said David Rainey, vice president of Gulf exploration for BP. Even then, federal and BP officials said it wasn't clear whether oil was flowing from the well after the platform sank because they didn't know what was happening underwater.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Yeah, the explosion may have killed the driller instantly
There is no electronic fail safe that I know of.
Let's keep things in perspective:
Real world first.
Politics second.
This is not your grandfather’s America.
More windmills......
Oh this is gonna help the “Drill here drill now” campaign. We can assure the skeptics that offshore drilling is perfectly safe while they swim in slime this summer.
Nuclear.
Maybe enviro wacko radicals?
I was being sarcastic.
Probably some whales did it......
They should convert to wind power then.
Of course none of the RATs are going to notice the fact it took a decade for another oil spill to happen. We’re going to go back to the “scared of our own shadows” days where an oil spill is just waiting to happen every second.
I wonder how many radical Greenies were in the area the day this occured.
I’m sure Obama has the FBI right on top of it.
Gas blowout could have been so sudden,driller could not catch it quickly enough. Then something had to ignite the gas. No smoking on drill floor. motors should be explosion proof. A tiny bubble of gas size of grain o rice deep in well expands to cubic foot at atmospheric pressure.
This was not sabotage. No way saboteurs could pull this off
Specs page (need recent-edition browser):
http://rigzone.com/data/rig_detail.asp?rig_id=153
Links to current stories on the page.
Thank you
It would be insane, nobody in the industry would ever do such a thing.
Well had been cased off and they were waiting for cement to cure before suspending the well and moving off.
Failure was sudden and catastrophic -- sudden explosion and fire 10 pm Tuesday night. Full details pending.
Cement obviously failed and allowed gas into wellbore.
This was an oil prospect not natural gas, but pay zone was below 18,200' (beaucoup deep) and pressured. If oil-based mud were in use, gas could have dissolved imperceptibly in the drilling-mud column (no warning volume-gain in pits as gas displaces drilling fluid), and come to surface w/o warning. This happened in the big Ixtoc blowout in 1978/9. Sneaky, fast-breaking, very deadly.
Alternatively, gas came to surface behind casing, evolving off oil reservoir and escaping to surface around failed cement job w/o observation until last minute. Kaboom.
Rams couldn't be closed (blowout preventers). Don't have the full story on that. With casing run, a new wellhead and BOP stack should have been in place.
Many available ignition sources: generators, light switches.
Rig also had 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel aboard.
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