Oil spill threatens to eclipse the Exxon Valdez, reaches the shore on the Mississippi River delta,could become the worst environmental disaster in decades, leak might not be stopped for weeks. Here’s what David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has to say:
“I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling.”
210,000 gallons a day, and the conservative pundits don’t even bat an eye lid. Don’t worry, it’s ‘natural’.
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Oil spill diaster
Jim Kirwan published on Rense on May 3 that an engineer with 25 years of experience with big machines (in the oil industry?) has the impression BP probably never can cap the broken drilling hole and in that case all the toxic ocean water in the world will destroy wildlife.
I reallize that this is not imginary because BP drilled on the edge of what human technology can do.
This is not drilling a well and then pumping-up the oil. On the sea bottom which is 5,000 feet below sea level the pressure by the water is already 150 bar. To spuw oil in it, is must have a pressure of at least 150 Bar or 2,200 psi. This is comparable with the pressure in an oxygen cilinder for welding. If the valve of a compressed air cylinder is broken or sheared off, the released pressure will cause the cylinder of 190 lbs to act like a rocket, shooting away quickly.
But at the point where the drill hit the oilwell 30,000 feet under the bottom of the sea then one has to add another column of 30,000 feet oil representing about 13000 psi totalling about 15,000 psi. At least this should be the pressure in the well to push the oil up just to the level of the rig.
But because the safety valves blew out and even destroyed the rig, there was way more extra pressure over 15,000 psi in that well. It looks impossible to cap the hole 5,000 feet below sea level for after robots failed, BP now tries to position a dome over the hole to catch the oil by sucking it up for 85%. But the oil is squirting immensely into the water drawing and mixing with the water by turbulance. If it is possible to catch 85% of the oil, which is highly questionable, at least 30,000 barrels a day continues spuwing into the sea going in circulation around the earth with the Gulfstream a little later. Now BP thinks to be able to release the pressure in the well by drilling another pipe which can be accomplished in 3 months they say. In the mean time 20 million barrels are circulating the world already if the dome not works. After that drilling nobody knows how long it takes to get some pressure off that big well.
Addition of poisonous metanol will poison wildlife and surface active agents will make an emulsion of the oil in water, moving it downwards in super fine particles which are ingested by all wildlife from the surface to the bottom.
Though this information is not helping to solve this oil disaster at all, it maybe of any help to be prepaired if they can’t stop it.
Bob (chemical enigineer)