May 11th 2010 is 11/05/10 in many countries.

:blush:

It's called spin. Tell someone something. Then facts based in reality that arrive later will be challenged. Humans just do not challenge the first fact with equal vigor. From the NY Times of 14 May 2010: So is this an Exxon Valdez scale disaster? No. Other factors apply such as this is 'sweeter' oil, water temperature, and oil dissipation causing natural actions to become more effective.

I repeatedly write it as 11 Sept for the same reason.

NATO, for example, does not permit 11/05/10 or 05/11/10 phrasing because the date (as shown on the picture) is how most of the world does it. As if we do not create enough confusion in the world with inches, pounds, and miles. Or waste a perfectly good spacecraft to Mars because America still uses different number systems.

One number that is standard - barrels. And British Petroleum still cannot get it right?

Ah. Ha ha. I love a funny tw.

What happens when an industry benchmark is based in a drinking song. The Barrel Polka:
Roll out the barrel.
We'll have a barrel of fun. ...

Well, the president got pissed at them today. Dad just does not understand how much fun they are having down there in New Orleans.

It's only 70,000 barrels a day.:rolleyes:

Can someone contextualize this a bit for me?

How much would the Deepwater Horizon have been pumping, if all things were perfect, per day? or: How does the spill compare to an oil rig that's just dumping it over the side?

How large is the deposit / reservoir of oil that is being tapped? or: how much oil will be left after they cap this thing with the relief well in 2 months?

Good questions.

NPR reported that the ship was there in a supply role before the explosion.

Ther might be some answers at The Oil Drum?

Thanks, Buster. 50 to 100 million barrels in that hole.

Deepwater Horizon is a drilling rig. It does not pump oil. They were in the process of moving out - the process of capping a completed oil well. Another platform would have taken over to pump oil.

I believe my previous post listed the estimated size of that well and estimates of how much is being released daily.

Originally. But the ship was asked to standby for reasons that were not provided. As reported only from one crewman on that ship.

Thanks BB. Great link.

To answer my questions:

1) Similar wells seem to produce roughly 40,000 barrels/day (+/- 2-5k) at peak production. I haven't really come across a coherent discussion of productive oil flow vs. hypothetical absolutely unchecked oil flow, but it is pretty clear that 70,000 b/d would be an extremely productive well.

2) via xoB, "50 to 100 million." (It's somewhere in the 400+ comments to the post linked above; great reading, kind of hits the full spectrum of the arguments.)

As an aside, one significant complicating factor that is discussed in threads on The Oil Drum attempting to estimate the size of the spill, but that I haven't really come across anywhere else (MSM, here, etc), is that the well is spewing a mixture of both natural gas and crude oil. If you're strictly concerned with an oil slick coming to shore, your volumetric estimates need to account for what that ratio is -- which is unknown, but apparently quite high at this particular well/deposit. Said volumetric estimates are also complicated because a particle velocity analysis needs to somehow distinguish between particle acceleration due to gas expansion and particles just accelerating out of the pipe.

I'm finding my internal, personal guess trending towards something more moderate since I read through those comments. But I'm more convinced than ever that BP is deliberately obscuring all information about the whole damn thing.

But that expansion coming out of the pipe is legitimate, the stuff isn't going to get smaller in volume again, so what they observe in the video is real volume. I think these guys are probably right.

What makes you think they know? BP is a big operation, but much of what they do is contracted out, and those contractors aren't going to tell BP any more than they have to. They're all covering there asses too.

I think the idea is that a lot of the volume is gas rather than oil. When you watch the video you can see the oil/gas mix change every few seconds as the plume changes from black to silvery bubbles. I guess a "natural gas slick" isn't as bad as an oil slick.

New Scientist has a discussion of the amount here; the answers generally fall in the 50 to 100 thousand barrel per day range.

Right now the thing to do is stop the flow, but let us not forget: eleven people died on that rig, and the blow-out preventer was supposed to prevent that, too.

Yeah, maybe more than anything what strikes me is the reluctance to admit what they don't know. I accept that this is pretty deeply entrenched in (corporate) culture. But they're throwing up a lot of weird delays that don't make sense in today's media world: after the first containment dome failed, they took a 48-hour breather to decide what to do next.

By way of comparison, the Times Square Car Bomb fiasco resulted in an arrest in 53 hours. It's not that a lot of important auxiliary work wasn't being done: they've cleared a bunch of wreckage, and at 5,000' it makes sense if things move a little slower.

But, in terms of the 'body language' of a PR campaign, these few weeks of BP trying to manage the fallout has felt very crude and blatant. The assessment which rings most true to me is that they are making a bunch of distracting noise while doing the only thing that has an established shot at working: digging relief wells to plug the whole thing.

I think overall, that's where my interest lies: the specifics of how much is spilling, when will it stop, how much will it affect things, etc-- all that is pretty much whatever it will be. I don't eat seafood, I don't live anywhere near the gulf coast. But how we perceive information intrigues me, and, particularly, the changing face of what it means to 'be transparent' or to share information. I think delaying things, releasing limited information (a few 60 second clips from their ROVs? why not a few hours, crowdsource that shit; etc) does BP a PR disservice. But they might have gotten away with it 5 years ago. That's an interesting change to me.

And, at the same time, there seems to me to be a (bipartisan) trend towards moral outrage coming to outweigh logical, direct interpretations of law: tea partiers and ecoterrorists have similar trajectories, in a way. So it's social and cultural consequences, maybe, that I'm after. After the Exxon Valdez adventure, the initial punitive damages were set at one years' profit. That didn't stick, but it raises the question: what sort of ecological disaster is significant enough to put a multinational corporation on the scale of BP or Exxon out of business? How do you begin to draw that line?

Political posturing in an effort to gain favor for the next election.

Not even close, apples and oranges.

You can't and will not be able to put a large multi-national out of business. If it is destruction of the company you are after it is not going to happen, the best you could hope for is that it would be swallowed up, in business terms, by another company, and business would go on as usual. But is that the goal? Is that the end we want? No. I don't think so.

I noticed a lot of the pictures on various websites, of every political stripe, are watermarked Greenpeace.

I was sent a great PDF with some fantastic pics, and a subsequent extensive commentary. If I could figure out a way to post a link to it I would. The pics were great. I forwarded it to my friend in the UK who was an engineer on Off-shore drilling rigs for 15 years. He had some interesting comments as well as to what happened.

Eyewitness testimony from CBS's 60 Minutes. Obviously, these failures are not accidents:
Deepwater Horizon's Blowout Part 1 of 2 and Deepwater Horizon's Blowout Part 2 of 2

BP: effort to plug Gulf oil spill going as planned
Link
Not sure what they could do, but the clocks been ticking for over a month.

I wonder what "heavy mud" is?

The humans are apparently in way over their heads on this one.

Sorry everyone, this is partly my fault. I've been using oil for years, so I feel somewhat responsible.

Link
Looks like they are, hopefully, having some success with getting this under control. The timing couldn't have been better either.

Well, they could have done it a month ago. I think that would have been better.

Smart ass. :rolleyes: I was referring to Obama's press conference.

From here. Interesting stuff!

The heavy mud seems to be working for now. At this point as much as 29.5 million gallons of oil may have been spewed out. There are concerns with the hurricane season approaching that oil slicked waves could slosh inland creating even more damage.

I heard on NPR this morning that the plants in the wetlands may all be killed off. This would be a terrible blow for those ecosystems. Never mind all the animals that depend on them, the roots of the plants help hold the soil in place. Dead roots mean all the soil will be all washed out to sea, leaving empty waste lands behind. :(

what about the important things - like bourbon street?

It is interesting that petroleum is generally measured in barrels. Yet this spill is being invariably publicized in US news outlets in gallons. 42 gallons to the barrel. Is someone trying to make it sound bigger or something?

Sam, delta mud would be immediately replaced if washed out to sea. What's making the Mississippi Delta again?

And in due -- geologic -- course, the Mississippi River delta deposits will themselves become source rock for petroleum and natural gas.

Hey, report it in liters and really be amazed! ;)

I believe that the reason the top kill wasn't attempted sooner is that it takes a while to put the equipment onto place, and there were quicker (but less likely to work) things to try first. As it is, top kills have a 60-70% chance of success on dry land. They've never been done under a mile of ocean before. I wonder if the water pressure might actually help keep the oil in the well

I don't see how people can blame Obama. It is BP's (and/or the other two corps involved) fault that it blew, and BP's job to plug it and clean up. All the prez can do is tell them to "plug the leak" which they were attempting already. He could order in Coast guard or National guard resources to help with containment and clean up, but I've seen some of that on TV already.

Really, what was Obama supposed to do that he hasn't?

Just shy of 159 liters/bbl. Quickie from Wiki, scroll down to Oil Barrel. Says the SI world uses cubic meters or else tonnes. Works for me.

No, they were not talking about delta mud. They were referring to the soil substrate that forms the basis for life in the wet lands. If this substrate is washed out to sea, it will not be replaced for a long, long time. Plants will no longer be able to take root and grow in former wetlands areas. The entire ecosystem will be subject to collapse.

Never once have I heard the spill described in gallons. This spill is not a media invention, it is a crime.

I've seen it as both gallons and barrels, but mostly barrels. I'm annoyed at the few news stories that have reported gallons. Keep your units consistent, people.

I have seen both as well
Watched a lot of CNN this am - in some reports, amounts were gallons.
Made it rather confusing.

The top kill has been declared to have failed. Bugger.
I think we're up to plan H now (notably similar to preparation H) which is a sea floor riser containment thing. I don't know how that differs from the top hat thing was tried earlier.
The relief well is the only reliable solution. That is still a long way off. I kind of wonder if all the other attempts are expected to fail but are being done to maintain the appearance of doing something.

I've been wondering the same thing. All this is window dressing till the only viable solution is completed.
I really don't understand why they can put a smaller tube inside, yet cannot put a larger pipe over it.

Guessing at the physics here. A small pipe inserted inside the main pipe with a tight seal would maintain the pressure, allowing extraction. A big containment dome allows the spill to burst from the pipe. The spill is part natural gas. As the gas gets released from the pipe, it undergoes pressure drop, thus expanding and cooling substantially. This cooling causes some hydrocarbons in the spill to freeze. These frozen bits clog up the containment dome, so additional oil or gas is forced out into the open sea again. I think that was what went wrong with the Top Hat and similar strategies.

Wasn't the top hat a funnel shape though? Does that matter?

Was ZenGum's post full of innuendo, or is that just me?

:lol: now that you mention it ...

BP accused of staging cleanup photo-op

http://www.cnn.com/video/#

Pelosi blames Bush administration for BP oil spill.

link

I think this happened because george bush hates black people.

I'ma let you finish, but George Bush had the best hates black people OF ALL TIME.

I guess black people and fishermen will continue to be hated at least until August - that's the earliest they think they can get a second well built. No one seems to have much confidence in the sea floor riser containment thing. From sea to shining sea, anyone?

Couldn't the residents just make money collecting the oil off the water and re-selling it? It's probably worth more than seafood.

Look, free oil!

Funny. I've never heard any unit but gallons cited here in SoCal, either print media, net, or radio.

What seemed to have stymied the silo-type container placed atop the blowout sounded like the formation of methyl-hydrate crystals inside, which blocked the flow, and they had no way of clearing them out.

Pictures from the gulf coast.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/201...na_shores.html

Wow - heartbreaking images.
I still cannot fathom that there is nothing we can do to contain this flow. Don't other countries, NASA, the Navy ... someone have something that can help? I'm just appalled that there is so much talk and apparently so little action taking place.

Perhaps this comment from that link has a good idea...
At the very least I would think that having as many able-bodied people there to help with the cleanup would be a good thing. Why is no one coordinating this effort?
I've heard/read a few things about the corps of engineers not allowing LA to dredge and attempt to protect the wildlife. They need to do studies first. WTF? Could it really be any worse than whats happening?

BP should be required to hire everyone that shows up for a clean up job until its done.

I agree that they should pay, but perhaps this is something that our Gov't should be coordinating. Since they believe, or say anyway, that BP has more expertise in the plugging/sealing/containing... whatever.

right on

No question about it. The only excuse I have heard is they are requiring people to have bio-hazard training. OK, Don't the Armed Forces have that? Get some of them in there.