Posted on 05/24/2010 7:56:01 PM PDT by mojitojoe
BP oil leak: Fallen Deepwater Horizon was tapping second largest oil deposit in the world
If there is a single aspect to the dangers of the BP oil leak, it lies in the question CEO Tony Hayward and other BP executives have been avoiding since the first drop of oil went rogue: How much oil is leaking?
The real answer is - more than anyone wants to admit, because the well holds enough oil to make Saudi Arabian drillers jealous.
The oil field the Deepwater Horizon had tapped is said to be the second largest deposit in the world. Viewzone.com reports, The site covers an estimated 25,000 square miles, extending from the inlands of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas.
The oil deposit is so large, it could produce 500,000 barrels of a day for more than a decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
It’s just loose mud for a long ways down....
I better hurry over to Galveston, once again, before it turns gooey and black ...
Like someone above told me, Come to Arizona! We don’t have an ocean BUT WE HAVE A LOT OF BEACH! LOL!
That is an accusation...I am beginning to think we got to have some new technology to handle this Beast....
Oh... it’s no big deal... it still hasn’t surpassed the biggest oil spills in the world, yet ... and if it does ... no problems... it happens all the time anyway ... LOL ...
The oil deposit is so large, it could produce 500,000 barrels of a day for more than a decade.
At least we'll have lots of oil ... :-) ... can we reduce that foreign dependency now?
“I swear, I think people beleive ALL nukes crack apart the world and create Godzilla.”
But it’s true! I have seen the movies! Wait, are you trying to say Godzilla isn’t real?
There is not enough debris at the site to suit you?
A number of different things could cause venting of gas, and without more information, I can't really speculate.
Flowing wells do surge, however, and expanding gas bubbles in the pipe can eject a slug of oil from pipe with amazing force if the gas bubble is just the right size. If this is at the end of the riser, there could have been accumulations of hydrates in the pipe, cleared out by a slug of oil. Sediment will get shifted around by the sudden pressure surge, perhaps even quite a bit, and then settle back down on top of whatever is present.
Without more informaition, though, and missing over half of the images (I get a red 'x'), all I can do is guess.
They have already gone after the shallow stuff with rigs that stand on legs. (About 1,200' max for them.) "Deepwater Horizon" was going after the newer, deeper frontier. Floating 5,000' above the seafloor.
Smokin’ Joe edumacated me at 109. Highly recommended.
Do these things ever close themselves off, by belching up a bunch of sediments and rocks and just closing off?
Read 109.
The one behind me is filled with birds - it’s quite beautiful - then again - we’re all a point where streams come together...
I was educated at reply 109 by Smokin’ Joe. Highly recommended reading.
I tend to agree. A nuke isn’t going to necessarily stop the leaks. I can think of several things that might work and all depend on the soil between the bottom and top of the well. I wrote a software system for Tyco valves, Anderson Greenwood, for sizing industrial pressure relief valves and controls used on some of those drilling rigs. It performed the fluid dynamic calculations based on such things as pressures and temperatures and materials. The amount of force on that oil is amazing. I have total respect for those engineers that do the drilling and I have complete and total faith in their ideas on how to stop the flow. Much of it is trial and error, so we should just give them latitude, watch the show and applaud once they succeed.
Ha...me too...there are several around on these threads that know way more than I do.
Since 0.465 psi/ft is the hydrostatic pressure and there is a few miles of rock sitting on top of the oil, and rock is denser than water, wouldn't the oil pressure at the bottom of the hole be higher than the hydrostatic pressure?
Have you all seen the live cam in the past 15 minutes? What happened? Lots of brown all at once and for a few seconds it looked like there was fire. What is going on down there?
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