Oil Spill - Technical Discussion

[ronocnikral]

Well, I kind of miss the insight of many on here. The last thread was unfortunate to have some poor posts resulting in the thread being closed. So, the intention is to have this thread be about the scuttlebutt of technical aspects of the cleanup and well kill. My hope would be if there any crazy remarks the mods handle the individual(s) and allow the thread to continue if it can be steered back in the correct direction.

With that said...

Has anyone watch the 27 June video about the relief wells? I feel they are closer than many think, but farther than I hope. I think they will have it licked within a week...hopefully. Any rumors on how close the relief well is?

[RKDauph]

The commentary on PBR this morning said BP is hoping to have the flow stopped by July 27th. When the reporter ask about that specific date - the interviewee stated that's the day the BP CEO is giving the company's annual report.

I guess he needs good news.

[Jeff_Green]

I was just thinking about the old thread the other day and wishing it hadn't been killed. There was a lot of good information in it. I hope this one continues!

[venchka]

Stay focused. No drfiting into personal opinion, etc. We can do it.

The weather in the Gulf is really strange. Here in houston it has looked like pre-hurricane conditions for several days. Apparently, and I don't quite get it, the skimming process requires mill pond calm seas. Hopefully the Gulf will calm down soon. Then our equipment, unrelated to the oil thing, can get back to work.

Cheers!

[revjvegas]

Anyone else see the news the other night that now huge chunks of tar are now starting to show up on our beaches.

Once they can get that relief tapped into the line, that'll be all she wrote. Should just then be a matter of top killing the well and then pack with cement.

[venchka]

RE: Tar balls in Texas.
1. The report I heard said that the tar balls measured 1cm to 3 cm. Very small.
2. Said tar balls were collected and filled a whopping 5 gallon bucket. Barely noticeable.
3. Apparently (insert sarcastic tone) this massive accumulation of tar balls were transported by ships entering Galveston Bay.
4. I've seen more tar than that on the beach east of Destin way back in the 70s.

[revjvegas]

I'm not referring to tar balls, but chunks...

Tar Mats Discovered In Galveston - Houston News Story - KPRC Houston

[ronocnikral]

found this as an update on the relief wells.

The head of BP's Gulf Coast restoration unit, Bob Dudley, told The Wall Street Journal stopping the well between July 20 and July 27 could be possible "in a perfect world with no interruptions."

"He (Dudley) gave that as the very, very best scenario if everything went absolutely superbly according to plan and there are no interruptions but the expectation is that it will be August," a spokeswoman said.

hopefully they are under-promising and are going to over-deliver...

[ronocnikral]

Originally Posted by revjvegas

Anyone else see the news the other night that now huge chunks of tar are now starting to show up on our beaches.

Once they can get that relief tapped into the line, that'll be all she wrote. Should just then be a matter of top killing the well and then pack with cement.

i believe they would actually kill from the bottom (via relief well)...

How a relief well works | Gulf of Mexico response | BP

[revjvegas]

yes, sorry.
Thanks for the correction.

[Imagebuffet]

Originally Posted by venchka

Stay focused. No drfiting into personal opinion, etc. We can do it.

The weather in the Gulf is really strange. Here in houston it has looked like pre-hurricane conditions for several days. Apparently, and I don't quite get it, the skimming process requires mill pond calm seas. Hopefully the Gulf will calm down soon. Then our equipment, unrelated to the oil thing, can get back to work.

Cheers!

I was hoping that the big, ocean-going skimmers could handle rougher seas. I know that the harbor skimmers that I saw in the Navy required completely calm surface to work. I think it has to do with the "skimming" part of the name. If the waves are too rough, they just get a lot of water, and the oil is broken up.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Ok on the national news tonight a BP spokesperson said that they are less than 100 ft from the drill stem but they are actually now drilling downward with the first relief well to tap into that stem at a downward angle-the stem is 7 inches in diameter- and once they hit the stem they will then pump in cement and close that stem off completely- the relief will not be used in this configuration to take up oil from the pool. What gets me is that they say that the pressure is lower at 2 or so miles down into the bowels of the earth than where the stem hits the surface-doesn't make sense to me.

Also they are supposed to put another cap on the well that allows even more oil to be recovered-say that they have a window of about 5-7 days of clear weather and the gov't is pushing them hard to have this done.

BP said that they hope to have the cementing process going before Aug 1st.

As to the A WHALE I think it can work in seas up to 4 ft but as mentioned by Richard when the water gets that choppy the oil doesn't stay on the surface but gets kind of folded into the waves and is no longer on the surface which means that you have to put through a lot more water into their system to remove the same amount of oil. Also heard that this ship works best on the freshest oil, hence near the wellhead site, which is already congested with traffic with the relief wells operations, the underwater subs base stations (several ships), and other supply ships along with tankers to take the recovered oil away.

Heard also that the navy is now using a blimp on clear days to run visual searches for larger oil patches and maybe coordinate ships in the area.

The smoke about the tar balls tagging along on ships to the Texas coast to me is pure BS, now they may have been sucked up into bilge water tanks and those tanks dumped off the shore but what they are saying is BS in my book. Really we don't totally understand all the currents in the gulf and probably never will and I don't see where you can rule out that some tarballs made it to a populated beach, I've heard a 5 gallon bucket and a 7 gallon bucket load which ain't much, and we will have to see if any further reports of them show up in the next week or so-if they do come in again and again then we must expect more over the next several months.

[Dobick]

So far from what I have found the New York Times has the most comprehensive and easy to follow time line that I have found

Interactive timeline which you can go all the way back to the beginning
Map and Estimates of the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico - Interactive Map - NYTimes.com

Anderson Cooper is pretty mad:


I figure if any one in this world has a fighting chance of influencing change at the national level and actually taking on the coast guard it will be CNN (especially if fronted by Anderson Cooper) I am biased in the fact that I for the most part really appreciate the way that he presents his coverage.

For the record I do not believe there is a conspiracy occuring, I just think the Coast Guard wants to be able to move all obstacles (regardless of how small) out of the way to fight this issue, as well as CYA for any future litigation from this event.

[iCe]

On the other thread I alluded to the relief well being on target for the first week of July. My brother-in-law works for TransOcean. He's in the loop so to speak. He told me that the date was moving target because as the "sensor" gets close to the well bore the steel in the casing messes with it and they have to slow down. He said "the boys have been working their a--es off and have done a great job". That was back on 6/13 and I haven't talked with him since. It looks like he wasn't too far off. I think it will happen sooner than they are saying now but that's just a guess.

It seems like every time I've checked the weather for the GOM the seas have been rough (7'-10'). That's got to mess with the cleanup effort. The tarballs are probably from the leak. The currents in the GOM are wonky this time of year. Eddy currents spin off and back flow in the general direction of south TX. That's what feeds the development of tropical doo dads. If you buy into the idea that the bulk of the oil has been below the surface then it's not too much of a stretch to think that some of it has made it's way to our neck of the woods. The idea that the hydrocarbon has been subsurface (though controversial and I certainly can't prove it) has always worried me. If it is... the affects of the leak will drag out over a much longer time than if it was burping out of a supertanker with a hole in it. Neither is a good scenario.

With all of the hand wringing and people standing in line for the free money I am not convinced that the "disaster" part of the equation hasn't been grossly over stated. Money has a way of turning people...

On another technical note- I've thought about the quoted volume of the leak a few times over the last few weeks and a little light bulb recently came on... I've always felt like the volumes were grossly over stated but other than the appearance of the leak on the ROV feeds I had no idea of exactly why I thought so. I finally figured out what was bugging me. Measuring flow through an orifice (hole) is a fairly exact science. In the real world we measure flow with a precision bored orifice plate (accurate to the 3rd decimal place) set between two flanges. There are pressure taps on either side of the plate for measuring the differential pressure across the plate while gas, liquid, or steam flows across it. A differential pressure transmitter is used to measure the delta P. The transmitter range is rarely higher than 0-200 inches of water (divide 200 by 27.7 to get psig). The delta P across the hole (leak) was estimated to be around 5,000 psig. I think that estimate is high. I think the shear rams have pinched the drill stem for one thing and I think there is debris in the line (just my opinion though). I think that the unknown restrictions in the well bore are limiting the total pressure upstream of the exit point and therefore that limits the flow rate. However, if the pressure is that high or even close to it the velocity across the "hole" is super sonic (sonic for short). When the flow across an orifice (hole, crack, valve trim, etc) reaches sonic, no matter how much you increase the upstream pressure, the flow rate will not increase. Watch the feeds... try to remember the feeds from before they cut the risers. The leak did not look like a jet of fluid. More like a billowing plume. They have been over estimating the amount... imho...

[carrbowl]

I may have misread something but Galveston Island and the east end have seen some of the oil. They have been removed. This is first hand information as of July 8.