"Towards a bleed-out"? & "BP has the computer"

[BelgianMadCow]

Came across this bit in our mainstream paper that covers the BP catastrophe the best, they are more comprehensive and ahead of US M$M. It's pretty shocking, haven't seen it on DU or found it in your M$M yet. Both excerpts are paragraphs of the same article, translation & bold are mine:

Towards a bleed-out?
Two new sources, both involved in the rescue operation, confirm the story of problems with the well below the seafloor. "We discovered things that were broken in the sub-surface," said a BP official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Mud was making it out to the side, into the formation."

Minister Chu
Energy minister Steven Chu would have personally intervened during the top kill operation, reports another source. "Chu urged BP to stop adding pressure to the well through the top-kill maneuver because things could happen that would make the situation worse."

Senator Bill Nelson from Florida says meanwhile that he, too, has information there are subsurface leaks. All of this would point to the well becoming unstable due to erosion. In a worst case scenario that would mean BP will have to deal with a 'fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit', causing the well to bleed-out unhindered and unstoppable, certainly at that depth. Experts estimate 150000 barrels would leak out of the well per day, probably more.

Have you heard confirmation of the subsurface leaks from BP? They are lying, again, imho. This information chimes in with dougr's posts on TOD. At this point I think it's becoming a race between the relief well and this erosion process. The best of the best (not BP :sarcasm: but J Wright Company) are working on the relief well so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

BP has the computer
Meanwhile it appears most of the data assembled about amongst other things the location of beaching oil, the resulting damage and how many dead animals are found by American government services such as the Coast Guard and The US Fish and Wildlife Service, is directly deposited on a BP server. The National Incident Management System (NIMS) is setup like that apparently. The information is behind a BP firewall, and once it is sent there it legally becomes the property of BP. In reality, this means BP has total control over about all information collected about the gravity of the disaster.

Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. If I'd find US sources, I'd post in LBN, if any of you do, please go ahead.

ps: the main title of the article is "116 of world's rarest turtles put back into oil". They were put back after rescue and a bit later the oil also invaded their new location. :cry:

on edit: forgot the link, it's in dutch, apologies http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/5397/Milieu/article/detail/1121173/2010/06/19/116-van-s-werelds-zeldzaamste-schildpadden-teruggezet-in-de-olie.dhtml. Anyone that wants a translation of other parts of the article or the planet watch part of their site, let me know.

[truedelphi]

1. Thank you for posting. K & R.

About two weeks ago, several oil experts made the rounds of MSNBC (With Rattigan) and were discussing how the "Blow out hole" we see as featured on the endless "Oil Spill Cam" is not the only hole where oil is coming intot he sea.

That in fact, if that hole was all that was leaking, we would not be seeing all the oil we are seeing on the shores and in the water. (But then again, Why would BP want us to beleive the spill is not so vast? Did they really think that scientists who measure such things would rely only on their "Oil Spill Cam"?)

If you get a chance, watch the vid in my sig line. The "anonymous" woman speaker references how most people in and around the Gulf know there is more than that one hole.

[conscious evolution]

2. british petroleum admits to at least three leaks

in one of their SEC filings.
That is the only place I have seen them admit that,however.After all,very few people take the time to look up SEC filings for any corporation.(I would bet I am the only person on DU that does so.)
The SEC is a great place to hide shit in plain site.

[truedelphi]

12. That's quite a hobby you have -searching the SEC data base.

How do you go about that?

SOudns most excellent for me to know - I am constantly looking for the low down on Monsanto.

[BelgianMadCow]

14. not to go way off tpic, but if you're "into" Monsanto, dunno if you've seen this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#Le_Monde_selon_Monsanto

Have read it, subsequently checked EU legislation about GMOs, found it refers back to UK legislation, which refers back to US legislation, which was written by ex-monsanto peeps in the PDA, and is based on the principle of "substantial equivalence": if the "overall" characteristics such as composition and nutritional value of a GMO are similar to those of the unmodified crop, it's assumed to be "substantially equivalent" which precludes extensive testing and the need for labeling (in the EU at least). Saying hey well we changed a gene but that doesn't mean much. Like saying having Down's Syndrom makes no difference :crazy:

A true WTF moment for me.

Also as a result of the book, I stopped using Roundup in my garden (come look at my huuuge weeds now ;-)).

Monsanto also gave us PCBs and Agent Orange as you well know.

[truedelphi]

28. I'm into Monsanto the way

A smart bunny is into foxes.

And weeds are good - they are bringing to your soil the nutrients that it lacks.

After you pull a weed, either plant something you want in its place, or muclh so you don't ahve to weed again in two weeks.

We eat many of our weeds, and use those we have identified as herbal for the herbal remedies they provide.

Got some Costmary drying above my head as I type this.

[conscious evolution]

15. Former DUer CorpGovActivist turned me on to this

He kinda gave DU a class on using goverment database search engines.To bad he got TSed.(a troll drove him over the edge.Remember monkeyfunk?)
Here is a link to the SEC site www.sec.gov
Here is the link to their search engine http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html
Just type in the company name or stock ticker and hit search.There is a page there that also says what the file # are for but I forgot whhhich link covers them.
You can also google SEC and get this.http://www.google.com/search?q=sec&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7 click on search for company filings.

Here is Monsatans latest filings http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001110783&owner=include&count=40

[defendandprotect]

27. Document shows BP estimates spill up to 100,000 bpd

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100620/ts_nm/us_oil_spill_markey

Not sure if this article has been posted here before -- so I'm adding it here!

[BelgianMadCow]

3. that's a damning vid in your sigline indeed - fucking boom

Required viewing!

However, I missed her speaking about 'most people in and around the Gulf know there is more than that one hole" she does say show us more of the leaks - but that was at the time they had the bent riser with a biiiig open end and some smaller leaks in the bend. Indeed, coincidentally, they focused on the small cracks all the time, and stayed away from the riser end. Bad PR I guessed. Says nothing about subsurface leaks however, I think. You don't have a pointer to these expertS would you? I hope it wasn't just Simmons, he has been putting out flaky stuff in spite of being highly regarded in the past (as per theoildrum again).

[truedelphi]

4. Actually one of the people was Simmons. Please feel free to clue me in

On why he is flaky - I am not being snarky, but would truly appreciate hearing why you are critical of him.

We tend to get more news in the USA about Miley Cyrus than the Oil disaster. So feel free to explain away.

[BelgianMadCow]

6. Well the regulars at the oildrum have consistently said so - and one thing that's flaky

he stated the pressure of the reservoir is likely 150.000 psi and that's totally impossible, dixit the experts.

Gonna look up a couple of the dismissive posts about his recent statements - just had my connection "reinitialized" when trying to go to an old thread there. never have that happen unless I'm reading / posting on DU...:tinfoilhat: or :hi: agent mike ;-)

[BelgianMadCow]

8. some links about Simmons

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6616#comment-653574

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6616#comment-653666 shelburn is a regular (which is hard to say of others, can't see join date for example. I've seen certain BP shills for sure), the subsequent discussion however shows not everybody is sure Simmons is (entirely) kooky. Your question is valid - and saying BP has been, is and will be lying is certainty as well, so who knows. The entire plume game alone :grr:

At least his premise "subsurface leaks" is confirmed in my OP...

further below that comment, poster kramskoi "...i don't know if Simmons is right or not but i heard something quite disturbing on wwl-870 New Orleans tonight...a caller stated that some kind of joint BBC/Discovery Channel investigation was happening about 5 miles from the initial spill site...he sounded really rattled and dejected at the news he reports hearing...4 leaks/fissures on the seabed...something around 6200 feet (maybe one of the disks downhole that we've been hearing about)...said that the operation had taken samples of the seafloor confirming something akin to the "oil lake" that Simmons opines...well casing damaged/destroyed...i was listening online but the caller had a bad connection so i just wrote as fast as I could the bits that were getting through...the guy sounded terrified..."

A Simmons search on that thread gives quite some interesting opinions. In earlier threads I can't find anymore, he was dismissed by other regulars more more "out of hand" - but maybe they have started doubting as well.

on edit: I can access older threads, missed it, all the way to the bottom on the front page. A previuos thread already yields

"<-> PassingThrough on June 17, 2010 - 3:18pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top

I'm in the UK, not the U.S., so have to qualify this comment by saying I mean no disrespect to the U.S. Congress. So with all due respect, why don't they have some technical experts on the committee to ask Tony Hayward, for example, whether he is aware of Matt Simmons' claim that there is a second leak, and (reminding him he is under oath), what his response is? It's such an important question. Why doesn't somebody ask it?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.

SNIP

<-> ROCKMAN on June 17, 2010 - 3:26pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top

PT --I gather you're new to the US political soap opera. Such congressional hearing (regardless of which party is in power IMHO) will seldom ever answer important questions. It usually political gamesmanship. By the time you're reading this you may well have seen excellent examples of this. Thank goodness your parliament doesn't involve itself in such displays. It could very embarrassing.

Rockman is the local Guru, he implies PassingThrough's question (so, yours) is a good question.

[truedelphi]

10. Thank you for those reports. Very interesting.

I also have some other expert somewhere on my HD - cannot remmebr if it is a flaky "expert" or a legit one.

And of course, even if it is not a sea bed of methane pouring through at various spots just under the ocean's crust - Michele Cousteau reminds us in several interviews, some now on YouTube, that all you have to do is dig down a little tiny bit into the sediment in Alaska (in area of the Valdez Oil Spill) and you'll see the oil has remained there. It has remained in the environment for over thirty years! The herring never came back. Fisherman were ruined.

Cousteau seems as troubled by the dispersant as the oil itself. The dispersant makes waters that contain the oil to appear as unaffected. So people are tempted to fish or to swim. One widely watched YouTube right now is this family sliding around on a boat, swimming as it over turns on them. Much laughter and fun - but most viewers are concerned: "Why would you let your kids be there when there is danger from dispersant and oil?

Cosuteau thinks this a Catastrophe to last decadess - as it is already four times the size of Valdez.

[BelgianMadCow]

11. A bit more & Cousteau: "unseen killing, dead falling into the abyss"

I remember reading Cousteau (and Riki Ott!) about the dispersant. Their (continued and allowed) use + the running leak size lies + infomation blocking makes me sick to my stomach. And I'm a belgian...

I referred to 140.000 psi - dunno where I read that, here's a abit about the pressures by Rockman again in response to a reference to 40k psi.

"Oldman -- BP doesn’t have an estimate of the reservoir pressure. They actually measured it with a tool (MDT) run into the hole on wire line. They measured about 11,900 psi. The MDT provides a very accurate measurement. Additional confirmation is that they drilled the reservoir with 14 ppg mud weight (13,000 psi). That would represent the max reservoir pressure. If the reservoir pressure were higher it would have blown out when they drilled it. This something a sophomore petroleum engineer would understand."
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6614#comment-653361

Doesn't say conclusively 40.000 psi isn't possible, in general (like in an adjacent, possibly impacted reservoir - speculation by me - though you would expect pressure equalization to a large extent then). Gonna look that up independently.

on edit, about 40k reservoir pressure - can't find anything but 10k-ish maxima but zero direct statements on "the" maximum dammit.

[truedelphi]

13. Again , good discussion points.

I jsut did a search about two hours ago, using ' "ocean crust" + methane ' as my search terms (if you use BP or oil spill, so many of the results are now bought by BP. I like to avoid those.)

And there was a team of people - joint American and Japanese, that went out and did some drilling below 6,000 feet for science. Last year.

They would know if 140K psi is possible at low depths of the ocean or not.

I'll check it out one more time. (Won't be back on computer till tongiht though, so again thanks for the interesting conversation here.)

[femrap]

7. What is this woman's

name in the f*cking Boom School 101? Has anyone found one yet?

[BelgianMadCow]

18. am pretty sure she wouldn't want to be named but I searched nevertheless

& was gonna PM you what I found - but the vid originates with this dKos poster "fishgrease", a reference I suppose is safe to her:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/11/11558/1890

[femrap]

19. Thanks.....

what a great diary. I had only seen the video. I wonder if the 'she' is simply doing a voice over so fishgrease's voice is not recognized.

I don't know.

But it's so infuriating to read that the Coast Guard knows how to Boom and they're not doing it. I can't tell if the Prez is being set up or if he's in on this with the oil boyz. And I read that Goldman Sucks as well as BP are major investors in Nalco, the dispersant company outside of Chicago.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6088220/why-did-obama-turn-down-offers-of-help.thtml

Maybe this is simply our Karma...starting wars for oil and then we end up drowning in our own oil. I just wish the nightmare would end.

I saw on our local news the other day that a Massillon, OH warehouse has opened up, hired 80 people and they're producing boom and sending it to the Gulf.

Thanks again.

[roguevalley]

17. this is why obama and co. need to pull their head out, take over

bp as a national security and disaster issue and take all the data they are cooking before the whole fucking world dies off in this extinction event.

[Oceansaway]

5. K&R...n/t

[pscot]

9. Add this to speculation

that the well unexpectedly tapped a vast reservoir of high pressure methane. We don't seem to be getting a handle o it.

[BelgianMadCow]

16. Here's Admiral Thad Allen on well integrity - thursday's briefing

http://blog.nola.com/2010_gulf_oil_spill/print.html?entry=/2010/06/oil_spill_containment_efforts.html

SNIP

"One thing that nobody knows is the condition of the well bore .. . We don't know if the well bore has been compromised or not. One of the reasons we did not continue with top kill at higher pressures, there was a concern that if we increased the pressure too hard it might do damage to the casings and the well bore. What we didn't want was open communication of any oil from the reservoir outside the well bore that might get into the formation and work its way to the sub sea floor and then result in uncontrolled discharge at that point. That has not happened, and that's the reason they're taking such precautions and did not proceed any further with the top kill," Allen said.

"We don't know exactly the condition of the well bore .. .That's the reason we didn't go . . . to excessive pressures on the top kill and decided that we'd deal with containment and then go for the final relief well."

SNIP

"There is a very high level of concern for the integrity of the well," said Bob Bea, the University of California Berkeley engineering professor known to New Orleanians for investigating the levee failures after Katrina, who now has organized the Deepwater Horizon Study Group. Bea and other engineers say that BP hasn't released enough information publicly for people outside the company to evaluate the situation."

[IDemo]

20. Just for folks who weren't aware of it, the guy who runs The Oil Drum is a DU'er

'profgoose' posts regular updates in the E/E forum with links to the latest info and discussion from petroleum geologists and others:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x251278

[BelgianMadCow]

21. I had seen a couple posts by him in LBN, but had no idea he has been with us several years

not surprising though, both being part of the reality-based crowd :)
Obviously, DU is very political where TOD tries not to, but both have merit ofc.

[FedUpWithIt All]

22. Some crazy numbers...

At least 4.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas — and possibly almost twice that amount — have leaked since April 20. That's based on estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey's "flow team" that 2,900 cubic feet of natural gas are escaping for every barrel of oil.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i-yfHJzPLDeBIhG5JDEF6VbaPR8QD9GEM9DO0

Has anyone here been talking about these numbers?

[BelgianMadCow]

24. "Has anyone here been talking about these numbers" - let's see what they mean

They haven't been talked about much, but truedelphi higher up was wondering about the methane as well.

And in another thread, people were rightfully pointing out CH4 - methane - is about 23 times as bad a greenhouse gas as CO2. I was thinking the total output is pretty significant, in terms of equivalent tonnes CO2, let's see:

There are 1000 liters in one cubic meter. 22.4 liters of any gas is equal to 1 mole, according to molar volume. Molar mass tells us that the main component of natural gas, methane, or CH4, has a molar mass of 12+1+1+1+1, or 16g per mol.
16g/mol * 1000L/m3 / 22.4 L/mol = 714g/m3 = 0.714kg/m3
Therefore, there are 0.714 kilograms per cubic meter of natural gas.
1 ft³ = 0.028316 m³ so 0.714 * 0.028316 = 0.02 kg CH4 per cubic foot (this is under normal conditions, 25°c and 1 atm pressure, I hope the number you referenced is as well, article doesn't state so explicitly, but that would be common).

So 4.5 billion cubic feet * 0.02 kg CH4/cubic foot = 90 million kg or 90000 tonnes CH4.

So the output so far has the effect of 90000 tons CO2 x 23 = 2 million (on edit: not billion) tonnes of CO2 = 2.000.000 tons, versus 5752289000 tons yearly US total (number from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions ), or about 0,034 % of the yearly US CO2 emissions.

I'm hoping that's wrong, gonna go over this a couple times. (on edit: yeah I was way too high)

The above is assuming all the methane comes to the surface unchanged - I think the majority does, but for example methane passing through water will make it more acid - but is meanwhile changed to CO2 in solution in the water iirc. Chemists around? (with a better memory?) Also, the methane captured via the current cap is flared - thus reduced to C02 emissions, not CH4, so less bad in terms of greenhouse effect.

Note: The figure of 4,5 billion cubic feet translates to 1.551.724 barrels spilled so far (using the 2900 cubic feet gas per barrel oil referenced in the article, this oil-to-gas ratio is specific for a particular well). That means the underlying assumption is 1.551.724 barrels / 60 days = some 25000 barrels per day. Which looks consistent with the numbers we have gotten over time.

[FedUpWithIt All]

31. Recent numbers are placing the BPD much, much higher.

Recent reports of a leaked BP document are talking about 100,000 BPD. I am crap at math but i cannot imagine what the methane would be if the new estimates are true.

[voteearlyvoteoften]

23. rec

[defendandprotect]

25. LATE K&R -- Relief Wells are going down 13,000 feet -- !!!!

Yahoo headline:

"Crews drill even deeper to build relief wells --

Workers start to bore two wells to reach more than 13,000 feet

below the sea floor ..."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100620/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill

[End Of The Road]

30. 13,000 feet below the sea floor, or 18,000 below sea level

The Development Driller III has made it to 16,000 feet below sea level as of last Thursday. Two thousand left to go to intersect the bad well, but they still don't think they'll be there before August. Must be tricky.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/relief_well_work_ahead_of_sche.html

[flamingdem]

26. Thank god for Yu. Even if he's not an oil expert he's smarter than the clowns at BP nt

[RainDog]

29. kick n/t

[RainDog]

32. 'nother kick n/t