Gulf seabed is leaking several miles away?

[mikeschn]

Did anyone hear that the Gulf seabed is leaking several miles away from the BP explosion? What's the fix for that?

Mike...

[ATXKJ]

The relief wells - basically the casing is broken down hole - that's why the Top kill didn't work (oh yeah and they knew that within a couple of hours)

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967

[madjack]

...those of us in the "know" knew that from the beginning...you first havvta know a bit about how oil wells are drilled and developed...then ya gotta know a bit about what actually happened in the beginning...this is where BP is truly and possibly criminally libel...they hurried the "concreting" and sealing of the well...this is what ultimately caused the explosion and has killed any chance of killing the oil flow with anything but a second well...the link ATX posted may be a bit hard to follow but does a good job of explaining why the top kill attempts not only didn't work but the engineers knew they had virtually no chance of working in the first place...but I guess they hadda try...the new wells they are drilling offer the only possibility of stopping the flow from reaching the surface...anything else is a pipe dream(literally)...................
madjack

[martha24]

Thank you madjack & ATX for the educational information.

I must say from what I understood the link saying, it sounded like there could be huge problems. Let us hope the new wells being drilled will solve the problem.

[mikeschn]

Why would there be a leak several miles away?

Mike...


These days, Simmons has been weighing in on BP (BP) and the worst oil spill in U.S. history, following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. As BP struggles to permanently stop the gush of oil, Simmons has been warning that the scale of the spill is much bigger and that there's a larger leak several miles away.

more here: http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/09/news/co ... /index.htm

[Arne]

If the pipe is ruptured, the oil is finding the path of least resistance.

[Jiminsav]

I say drop a bunker buster on top of the rupture and seal the hole permanently.

[Laredo]

nuclear or conventional.

There are more than 3,850 other wells, not to mention literal thickets of pipelines, in that area. The concussion from a bomb would start most if not all of them leaking even more than they already do.

Not to mention the aftereffect of setting off a spark in the presence of that concentration of methane.

Plus there's where the water the shock wave will move goes.

Mike:
the "several miles away, the seabed is leaking" story is based on the comments of a guy who's short-selling BP stock. I hope the SEC gets after this. The guy's been discredited many times and many places.
I'll just be a pig and refer you to Fishgrease on Daily Kos or Bob Cavnar at The Daily Hurricane (eljefebob) for more and better information.

The guy short-selling BP stock is the head of an investment bank specializing in oil & gas works. Matt Simmons, or Simpson, or something like that. He's trying to scare people so he can make more money.

He claims there's video evidence. Compare the "rising oil" in his video to the oil boiling -- literally -- out of that blowout preventer stack. There's so much gas in this oil it wouldn't be drifting around like that video shows (I think that's actually drilling mud with oilstains in it, being kicked up by the undersea robots, called remotely-operated vehicles, that are in use to try to maintain and improve the oil-capture equipment at the blowout site). It would be bubbling up the way a shaken coke does when you open it.

[madjack]

I've known about natural seepage for years...both on and off shore...google "natural oil seepage gulf of mexico" and do some truly suprising reading....
madjack

[dh]

Reminds me of the natural gas leaks that seeped under ground to Hutchenson KS (I was living in KS at the time) they had explosions and gysers of fire and the leak was miles away.

[mikeschn]

the "several miles away, the seabed is leaking" story is based on the comments of a guy who's short-selling BP stock. I hope the SEC gets after this. The guy's been discredited many times and many places.

I'm not surprised...

Mike...

[martha24]

I've known about natural seepage for years...both on and off shore...google "natural oil seepage gulf of mexico" and do some truly suprising reading....
madjack

There is natural seepage off my coast as well. Science is finding more and more such natural seepage areas around the world.

Here are a couple of links concerning the west coast & how much leaks out.
http://convergence.ucsb.edu/article/goo-and-gas

http://www.mms.gov/omm/pacific/enviro/seeps1.htm

Two small underwater containment structures positioned near Goleta Point, placed to collect natural seepage, have alone captured over 4 billion cubic feet of natural gas since 1982: enough natural gas to supply the needs of over 25,000 residential natural gas users each year.

Drilling in my part of the world would lessen the seepage.

[Laredo]

Remember Ixtoc I? That was 1979, in the Gulf, and lasted nine months. That oilfield, in Campeche Bay, made Mexico a net exporter of oil, before that disaster.

A fisherman kept getting his nets fouled with stuff in the water off the coast, and he finally complained to somebody who recognized the contaminant as crude oil.

Campeche Bay is a different kind of ecosystem from the Louisiana wetlands and estuaries, not to mention Ixtoc I was in just 200 feet of water, while Macondo No. 1 is in roughly a mile of water.

Not to mention there were 11 men killed on the Deepwater Horizon on the night of April 20.

I would urge everybody here to watch the ad at VoteVets' site. Think long and hard about what that ad really says, not just about the Deepwater Horizon wild well and the cleanup, but about the other consequences to our country that we face if we stay at oil's mercy.

https://secure.ga3.org/03/oilspill

[caseydog]

Remember Ixtoc I? That was 1979, in the Gulf, and lasted nine months. That oilfield, in Campeche Bay, made Mexico a net exporter of oil, before that disaster.

A fisherman kept getting his nets fouled with stuff in the water off the coast, and he finally complained to somebody who recognized the contaminant as crude oil.

Campeche Bay is a different kind of ecosystem from the Louisiana wetlands and estuaries, not to mention Ixtoc I was in just 200 feet of water, while Macondo No. 1 is in roughly a mile of water.

Not to mention there were 11 men killed on the Deepwater Horizon on the night of April 20.

I would urge everybody here to watch the ad at VoteVets' site. Think long and hard about what that ad really says, not just about the Deepwater Horizon wild well and the cleanup, but about the other consequences to our country that we face if we stay at oil's mercy.

https://secure.ga3.org/03/oilspill

Interesting video. It kind of goes along with the one I posted earlier. Presidents all the way back to Nixon have been calling for us to diversify our energy portfolio, but we never actually do it.

CD