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  • Current Events & Politics Moderators: deficiT | tryptakid | Foreigner

Disaster looms as oil slick reaches US coast

well, its unfortunate that they (both government and BP) have completely ruined their credibility. We have no way of knowing if they are telling the truth about this.
 
^lol coming from you thats kinda weird
my spider sense are suggesting that you gave some credibility to either of those before hand ? or are you just on mehm-amphetamine
 
:D what is mehm-amphetamine??? to tell you the truth I'm pretty happy with the coffee buzz i've got going.

and you're right, i pretty much stopped giving these organizations credibility when i learned how to think critically around age 13..
 
18 hours in and so far so good. Pressure is around 6700 PSI. Over the next 24 hours they're going to try to get it to 8000+. If they do that means the well is sound and the sea floor isn't going to burst open and start leaking elsewhere.
 
NEW ORLEANS - Many Gulf Coast residents don't believe it. Some accuse BP of making it up. And even those convinced that the oil leak has finally been stopped are tempered in their relief, aware that their environmental nightmare is far from over.

"It's a beautiful thing that it's shut off,'' trumpeter Shamarr Allen said as he stood on the sidewalk in the Musicians' Village in New Orleans' Upper Ninth Ward. "But there's still a lot of years of cleaning. There's going to be a lot of no fishing still. It's only the beginning of a long road that we have to travel. It's only the first step.''
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duh
 
I think that's normal. Small amounts of oil leaking from the seabed floor around highly-pressured oil reserves occurs naturally IIRC. The NOAA identified over a dozen such leaks earlier this month around the spill area that they said appeared to be natural.

It could be that the well casing has cracks in it that are leaking oil into the surrounding seabed, but we won't know until BP releases the final PSI pressure reading on the new cap later today. Anything under 6,000 PSI would mean the well is leaking significantly.

I think that's part of the reason they drilled the relief wells so deep though. Drill down to 18,000 feet and pump cement into the well, it stops the main leak and and of the leaking cracks along with it.
 
Strike that. 72 hours into the testing(half an hour ago) seeping has been detected some ways away from the well. If a seeping is confirmed, they'll open the cap and allow the new processing ships they just put in place to suck up the oil straight from the leak, so no oil should escape into the Gulf.

(CNN) -- Tests relating to the recently recapped oil well in the Gulf of Mexico have detected a "seep a distance from the well," Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said in a letter to a BP official.
Allen, in a letter to BP Chief Managing Director Bob Dudley, directs BP to provide a written procedure for restarting flow from the well if oil seepage near the wellhead is confirmed.
It was unclear from Allen's letter, which was released Sunday evening, whether testing on the well had been extended. It was scheduled to last at least until 4 p.m. Sunday. Earlier in the day, Allen said officials could decide to extend it in 24-hour increments.
"We've not been told it's stopping," BP spokesman Mark Salt told CNN.
Salt said he had no information about the leak mentioned in Allen's letter. The letter does not provide further details about where the leak was spotted or how big it is.
Video: Obama's 'good news' on oil spill Video: The leak's stopped, now what? Video: BP exec: 'Too early to celebrate' Video: No oil on beaches - for now
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In his letter Sunday, Allen asked BP to "provide me your latest containment plan and schedule in the event that the Well Integrity Test is suspended" and said the company should have its responses ready before a BP and government scientists conference call that was scheduled for 9 p.m. ET.
Earlier Sunday, a BP official said the recapped oil well could remain closed until a relief well is drilled if tests are favorable.
BP's Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Sunday morning that a variety of tests showed oil and gas were not escaping.
"No one associated with this whole activity wants to see any more oil flow into the Gulf of Mexico," Suttles told reporters Sunday morning. "We will continue integrity tests all the way until we get the well killed. There is no target to return the well to flow."
After BP's statement early Sunday, Allen said the testing schedule had not changed.
"The ongoing well integrity test will continue until 4 p.m. EST today, with the potential for additional extensions in 24-hour increments," Allen, the government's response manager, said in a statement. "As a condition of the extension, the U.S. government has required significant new monitoring and periodic evaluation and approval by our science team."
Allen said the government needs to understand the lower than expected pressure readings.
"This work centers on two plausible scenarios, depletion of oil from the reservoir and potential leakage caused by damage to the well bore or casing," he said. "While we are pleased that no oil is currently being released into the Gulf of Mexico and want to take all appropriate action to keep it that way, it is important that all decisions are driven by the science.
"Ultimately, we must insure no irreversible damage is done which could cause uncontrolled leakage from numerous points on the sea floor."
On Saturday, Allen said that once testing is eventually stopped "we will immediately return to containment, using the new, tighter sealing cap with both the [vessels] Helix Producer and the Q4000."
BP is conducting regular seismic runs, monitoring sonar, visual and acoustic activity and the data has been "encouraging," showing no problems.
However if tests show problems, BP officials said they are prepared to remove the tightly fitting containment cap and reassess.
"We're just taking this day by day," Suttles said Sunday. "Nobody wants to see any more oil go into the gulf, but clearly we have to make sure we don't make the situation worse."
No oil has gushed out since Thursday when BP closed all the valves in a new custom-made cap that was lowered into place earlier in the week. The undersea video images of a quiet ocean inspired cautious optimism in the hearts of Gulf
Coast residents devastated by three months of disaster.
Meanwhile, BP has restarted work on drilling two relief wells. Wells said that the first relief well is now about five feet away from the ruptured Macondo well and an intersection could occur by the end of July. BP then plans to pump mud and cement down to kill the ruptured well.
Leaving the well capped Sunday past the 24 hours of testing is a new development. On Saturday, it was expected the testing would extend only into Sunday afternoon.
Engineers and scientists have intensified monitoring of the well, pouring over images and data collected by robots, sonar scans and seismic and acoustic examinations. A government ship is in the area, fitted with equipment for detecting methane gas, which would be an indication of a leak.
The well integrity test began Thursday after two days of delays, first as government scientists scrutinized testing procedures and then as BP replaced a leaking piece of equipment known as a choke line.
Since there's less oil on the surface, BP officials said Sunday that the nearly 50 skimmers deployed at the well site collected nearly half the amount they had the day before. They only conducted one controlled burn, and Suttles said there have been numerous days in a row with no new shoreline impacts.
In the coming weeks, BP also plans to bring in two more oil collection ships in addition to the two already in the Gulf, bringing containment capacity to 80,000 barrels (about 3.4 million gallons) of oil a day, more than high-end estimates of how much oil had been leaking.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/18/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html?hpt=T1
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In a strange way, I find some solace in seeing how helpless humanity is in battling the consequences of its greed for oil. Part of me hopes this does end up in a disaster significant enough to scar humanity permanently so that we think twice before letting our greed guide our every move.
 
I'd agree except, as we've seen with the meltdown of the financial markets because of the greedy banks, the world can be brought choking to its knees because of a select few and even that isn't enough to force any change in the way we do things.

We're a country with the attention span of a 6-year-old. Nobody will care about oil spills, oil-covered birds or fish, or anyone in th Gulf in 6 months.
 
[qutoe=jamshyd]In a strange way, I find some solace in seeing how helpless humanity is in battling the consequences of its greed for oil. Part of me hopes this does end up in a disaster significant enough to scar humanity permanently so that we think twice before letting our greed guide our every move.[/quote]

Not all of us have as maturely come to grips with Thanatos. ;)

ebola
 
Jamshyd said:
In a strange way, I find some solace in seeing how helpless humanity is in battling the consequences of its greed for oil. Part of me hopes this does end up in a disaster significant enough to scar humanity permanently so that we think twice before letting our greed guide our every move.
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I wouldn't bet on that.

Imagine if the area around BP's well was so polluted that an area the size of New Jersey was almost totally devoid of life.

Would people care?

I guarantee they will not. How do I know this? Because the Gulf of Mexico has such a dead zone due to fertilizer runoff from the Mississippi River causing algae blooms and a collapse of oxygen levels in the water. Woopsie. It even affects what would be a decent shrimping ground.

If we went with ethanol-based fuels to wean ourselves off of oil, the problem would be worse.
 
We're a country with the attention span of a 6-year-old. Nobody will care about oil spills, oil-covered birds or fish, or anyone in th Gulf in 6 months.
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yeah, and here i was thinking our society has grown to around the adolescent stage :(
 
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