[kj] [OT] BP's latest failed attempt at stopping the leak...

[folk devil]

Substantiating some sources would be nice, which he admits himself.
I do however, find myself inclined to (sadly) believe much of it.

"1. That’s really deep, dude.

BP was drilling in an area where it is about a mile from the platform
to the ocean floor. That means they had to go down 5,000+ ft just to
get to the ocean floor. Humans can’t even go down to that depth because
of the near-freezing temperature and the pressure.

2. The Russians did it on land. Maybe we should try it in the water.

Once they reached the ocean floor, BP was trying to drill a superdeep
well – maybe as deep as the Russian’s Kola SG-3 borehole which reached
40,000ft deep back in 1989. Basically, BP was drilling somewhere in the
range of 25,000-30,000ft below the ocean floor. Apparently that is
REALLY deep. And from what I can find, drilling to those depths has
never been attempted in the Gulf of Mexico.

3. Who needs an anchor anyways?

To make things even more unsafe, the BP Deepwater Horizon platform was
a floating platform that was kept in location by a sophisticated GPS
system. That means the the BP platform was not even anchored to the
ocean floor, and that is not a very stable/safe way to drill for oil in
deep waters.

4. Under Pressure

Typical oil pressures (pounds per square inch aka psi) are in the area
of 1,000 psi. BP had reached such a depth that they were seeing
anywhere from 20,000-70,000 psi from this oil well. Some geologists
predict that the psi at such depths would actually be in the range of
80,000-100,000 psi.

5. Epic Fail-Safe Fail

Due to the massive pressures, every one of the fail-safe measures and
valves on the BP platform failed. And there is even a rumor that BP was
warned beforehand about a warped fail-safe valve by one of their own
employees. Regardless, they are fairly certain that nothing could have
stopped that oil because the pressures were too high. We simply don’t
have anything that can stop that type of pressure.

6. Oil, Volcanoes, and New Theories

Why would BP want to drill so deep? Well, there is a theory that
petroleum oil does not come from dinosaur fossils. To the people who
subscribe to this theory, they believe oil is actually “abiotic,” which
means that it is continually being formed deep within the earth’s crust
by some sort of chemical process. (This same theory appears to be a
pillar to other theories that say the energy/oil shortage is entirely
false. If oil is continually being formed from some chemical reaction
involving magma, then all that stuff we hear about oil peaks is
completely fabricated. But that is another story altogether, and like
most of this post, it could be completely false. BTW, some people think
that if they drilled into an area where magma is creating petroleum
oil, they could have possibly drilled into a volcano. Oh good.)

7.  Don’t Hold Your Breath

Oil isn’t the only thing coming out of that well. It turns out that
other stuff comes out with the oil. Specifically, we are talking about
Hydrogen Sulfide, Benzene and Methylene Chloride. (link)

The concentration threshold for people to experience physical
symptoms from hydrogen sulfide is about 5 to 10 parts per billion. But
as recently as last Thursday, the EPA measured levels at 1,000 ppb. The
highest levels of airborne hydrogen sulfide measured so far were on May
3, at 1,192 ppb.Testing data also shows levels of volatile organic chemicals
that far exceed Louisiana’s own ambient air standards. VOCs cause acute
physical health symptoms including eye, skin and respiratory irritation
as well as headaches, dizziness, weakness, nausea and confusion.Louisiana’s ambient air standard for the VOC benzene, for example,
is 3.76 ppb, while its standard for methylene chloride is 61.25 ppb.
Long-term exposure to airborne benzene has been linked to cancer, while
the EPA considers methylene chloride a probable carcinogen.The one we should really worry about is benzene. Acceptable levels
of Benzene are 0-4 ppb, but some people are reporting Benzene levels
near the Gulf of Mexico in the range of 3,000-4,000 ppb.
8. What “they” are not telling us

According to some people, the levels of those 3 chemicals in particular
will cause a massive increase in sicknesses, cancers and deaths for
people in the southeastern United States. Of course, the EPA is not
reporting on the levels of these chemicals in the air right now. Why
would they? It would probably create a panic.

9. Nuclear Bombs Fix Everything

If BP did get to those superdeep depths of 30,000+ ft… Because the
pressure is so high down there, humans don’t really have anything that
can seal that well. There is talk of using a nuclear device to “fix”
the problem, but many people claim that would only make everything
worse, as it is a last-ditch effort that is not a certain fix. (That
kinda reminds me of the movie Independence Day when the government decides to use a nuclear weapon on the ship over Houston. It didn’t work, and it blew up the entire city.)

10. Years and Years and Years

The publicized estimates (in the media) of how much oil is leaking
every day are dramatically conservative. Again, many think this is to
avoid a panic. The actual amounts could be in the vicinity of 4 million
gallons per day. This superdeep oil well could possess over 1 trillion
gallons. If we can’t stop the leak – this oil well could be spewing oil
for years and years and years. In that worst case scenario:

The oil would eventually kill the entire Gulf of Mexico. And then it would continue spreading to other oceans.The oil would reach Europe in a few years.That amount of oil floating on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean
would cause all sorts of massive problems. For example: If lightning
struck the ocean’s surface, it could spark an oil fire. That fire would
eat up a lot of the oxygen in our atmosphere. Obviously, that scenario
is problematic for several reasons.
11. Fissures don’t sound good at all

What else? There are things called “sea floor fissures” (i.e.
fountains), where oil often seeps up through the ocean floor into the
world’s oceans. According to some news articles, this happens naturally
from time to time, and minor amounts of oil can be seen seeping on the
ocean floor in certain places around the world. However, right now in
the Gulf, they are starting to see fissures that are leaking alarming
amounts of oil up to 5 miles away from the BP well (link).
This is very problematic, and it could point to something even more
devastating than the blownout BP well. If the casing was damaged below
the sea floor, “basically, you‘ve got uncontrolled [oil] flow to the
sea floor. And that is the doomsday scenario.” (link)

Did I miss anything? Let me know.

PS. The information I listed in this post comes from a variety of
websites. A lot of this information fits into a doomsday scenario. And
then some of it is textbook conspiracy theory. Regardless, there is
something really bad going on down in the Gulf of Mexico. It could be
something that we really have no way to stop. I hope and pray that we
find a way to get ourselves out of this mess. It’s bigger than BP. It’s
bigger than us. If even a few points in this post are true, we are
going to need a miracle.

PS2. Here are some other articles and sites that have information about drilling:

Nigeria’s agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill (Guardian.co.uk)20,000 Leaks Under the Sea (Slate.com)"

From: marsboy1 at msn.com
To: gathering at misera.net
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:08:26 -0400
Subject: Re: [kj] [OT] BP's latest failed attempt at stopping the leak...








New theory surfacing on the spill, to wit: BP foolishly has attempted for the first time a "deep well" drilling at sea. The Russians have successfully drilled deep wells to 40,000 and even 50,000 feet on land. However, in this case, it is theorized that the BP drill may have ruptured a strata of the earth never before breached which is spewing oil at at upwards of 50 to 70,000 psi, whereas the normal psi range of an oil well is 1000psi. Thus, there is no mechanism in existence which could possibly have stopped it, or any that will stop it . . . enjoy your dinner.

this blog kinda collected the info going around:

http://www.kerrydean.com/news/11-reasons-bp-gulf-oil-spill-disaster-should-scare-everyone/



 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail is redefining busy with tools for the New Busy. Get more from your inbox.
http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_2
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://four.pairlist.net/pipermail/gathering/attachments/20100615/b1773a5e/attachment.html>