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

[Brendan Quinn]

Is that abiotic theory any chop though? I've heard about it before but not
looked into it very deeply...I thought it was fairly certain that oil was
either dinosaur bones or plant mush.

 

One thing this whole debacle has highlighted is that oil is becoming harder
to extract. Roll on Craig Venter's methods to create bacteria that suck up
C02 and excrete oil... 

 

PS: There's a thread on Dailytech.com about some US Army boffin suggesting
they use a MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) to plug the leak (as opposed to a
nuke, which is nuts). Sounds fucked to me. "To a man with a hammer every
problem looks like a nail" 

 

From: gathering-bounces at misera.net [mailto:gathering-bounces at misera.net] On
Behalf Of folk devil
Sent: Wednesday, 16 June 2010 12:41 PM
To: gathering at misera.net
Subject: Re: [kj] [OT] BP's latest failed attempt at stopping the leak...

 

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
<http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/05/air-tests-from-the-louisiana-coast-r
eveal-human-health-threats-from-the-oil-disaster.html> )

*	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 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbN7v80TDdw> ).. 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
<http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/06/evidence-points-to-destruction-benea
th.html> )
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
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-
shell> 's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill (Guardian.co.uk)
*	20,000 <http://www.slate.com/id/2255929/pagenum/all/>  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-s
care-everyone/



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