Posted on 05/27/2010 2:03:28 PM PDT by moose2004
HOUSTON BP had to halt its ambitious effort to plug its stricken oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday afternoon when engineers saw that too much of the drilling fluid they were injecting into the well was escaping along with the leaking crude oil.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Only extends to remarks made on the floor of the House. Extended, I think, to remarks made in committee hearings and other public business meetings in the Capitol. If Congresscritter says the same slanderous thing in a presser out of town or over in Virginia, he's liable.
NWS was saying yesterday -- it was on a TV Wx report I watched last night -- that water temps are way up all across the Atlantic tropics (they displayed maps, accessible online at NOAA's website), and that there will be lots of hurricanes this year.
Not obvious to those who tested it:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/excerptfrom2003report.pdf
Or perhaps fractionate:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/science/0521spill.pdf
And/or stay for some time underwater in large plumes, depleting oxygen and killing crabs, shrimp, mussels, fish...
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N25115351.htm
And remember, the greater amount of oil below the surface is not instead of, but in addition to the huge amount on the surface.
Thanks. So as long as all the oozing pus infecting the system originates in DC it’s fine. Home base. The damage can destroy people as far out from there as possible, but as long as the Congress critters have one toe touching home base they can lie all they want.
At least we know what the rules are, for those who still believe the rules get followed.
Was Murtha in DC when he called the Haditha Marines murderers and said that the recon tapes would prove it?
Link material is irrelevant to environmental damage.
I don’t see what point you’re trying to make with this linked material.
The oil on the surface, and the oil under the surface have to add up to the total flow out of the well, which is known.
If the oil "fractionates" and breaks up into smaller particles, this is a GOOD THING, because this gives a larger surface area for bacteria to munch on, and the longer the oil takes to REACH the surface, the better, because that gives time for the oil to be diluted by seawater.
All of the effects you appear to be quoting will be worse for shallow spills, given the same amount of oil.
Ok, how much is it and according to whom?
If the oil "fractionates" and breaks up into smaller particles, this is a GOOD THING
Oh? What chemicals does fractionation result in?
That it's not like a shallow spill where the oil rises quickly to the top - there can be a much larger kill zone.
Nope. The 'mud' they were pushing into the pipe (below the failed parts) was being forced back up out the holes in the pipe.
A consensus opinion seems to be 10,000 bpd. I put no credence in the "estimates" by NPR and others. They have no data to work from. BP and the Coast Guard do.
"Oh? What chemicals does fractionation result in?"
Uh, the same ones that came out of the well. All "fractionation" does is more or less separate them somewhat by density. However, the more fractionation and dispersion that happens, the less toxic the oil is, and the easier it is for the naturally-occurring bacteria who can metabolize it to do so.
Not quite.
In his own words Obama owns this top-kill operation:
Now, when it comes to whats happening on the surface, weve been much more involved in the in situ burns, in the skimming. Those have been happening more or less under our direction. And we feel comfortable about many of the steps that have been taken. There have been areas where there have been disagreements. Ill give you two examples.
Initially on this top kill, you know, there were questions in terms of how effective it could be. But also what were the risks involved? Because were operating at such a pressurized level, a mile underwater, and at such frigid temperatures that the reactions of various compounds and various approaches had to be calibrated very carefully.
Thats when I sent Steven Chu down, the secretary of Energy, and he brought together a team basically, a brain trust, some of the smartest folks we have at the national labs and in academia to essentially serve as a oversight board with BP engineers and scientists in making calculations about how much mud could you pour down, how fast, without risking potentially the whole thing blowing.
So in that situation, youve got the federal government directly overseeing what BP is doing, and Thad Allen is giving authorization when finally we feel comfortable that the risks of attempting a top kill, for example, are are sufficiently reduced that it needs to be tried.
The concensus keeps rising - as more if found beneath the surface. A third large plume was found yesterday - six miles wide from the surface down to the floor.
Moving beneath the surface it is harder to contain and collect. There is a great deal of life in this zone.
Yes, quite. There may be a very, very few that react with some or other natural chemicals and change form, but the only thing fractionation does is separate them by density. The more important effect is to break up the large "blobs" into small ones. Smaller blobs to two things, allow more of those chemicals that might actually be soluble in water to dissolve, and increase the surface area available for bacteria to attach to, and start "eating" the oil.
It’s quite different to skim crude off the surface than to deal with benzene, toluene, etc., along with suspended oil under the surface.
No, actually it doesn't.
Look, the sum of all the plumes has to add up to the total flow out of the wellhead. This is simple arithmetic. It doesn't matter how many plumes they locate. The total emitted amount hydrocarbons is known from the well flow.
BP and the Coast Guard have data on how the gas/oil ratio has changed with time, and are in the best position to calculate the total amount of hydrocarbons that have been spilled. Nobody else has this data (yet).
Look, the magnitude of toxicity is directly correlated to concentration. The more spread out (horizontally or vertically) the less toxic the spill is. The fraction that they can "skim" is tiny compared to the total emitted (and always has been in EVERY spill to date). The thing the eliminates oil spills isn't capturing the oil, it is good old nature cleaning herself up by the natural process that have been working for literally millions of years.
No, it's not. It's been emphasized over and over again, they don't know.
Natural processes are at a much greater disadvantage when the oil remains at all depths - and in large concentrations. Which is the case here.
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