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dwot (99.49)

BP - Plan to increase capture to 60,000 to 80,000 barrel per day

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June 14, 2010 – Comments (17)

I was looking at the live video feed when they were capturing 15,000 barrels per day, and I found the video distressing because it looked like a lot was still pouring out.

Well, now there's a plan to capture 60,000 to 80,000 barrels per day.  While it would be nice to capture more of the oil, it is distressing that that much oil per day needs to be captured.  Just how much has gone into the ocean?

Amazing that they stood by that 5,000 barrels per day line for so long.  We have been doing marine science in school this semester so it was an opportunity to look at the issue deeper and my students had strong probably grounds to believe the 5,000 barrels per day was a lie very early.   I guess we ended up looking at it early because I saw estimates of over 20,000 barrels per day fairly early and I had a student challenge me when I brought a figure different then what the media was reporting so we got to look at how these things develop.

On a sad note, I mentioned a couple weeks ago one of my student's father had fallen into the river and was lost.  They found his body this weekend.  We had grad last Thursday and it brought tears to my eyes how this young man's introduction for grad talk about how important his dad was to him.  And his poor mom who walked him in smiling, she looked like she was going to cry the rest of the evening.  And I am in a bit in shock.  I hire my students to help me with work I need help with and I had arranged on Saturday for my student to come help me with some work Sunday.  They found his dad Saturday evening and he didn't say a word to me about it all day Sunday and he was helping me for 4 or 5 hours.  I didn't find out until day.  

17 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On June 14, 2010 at 3:21 PM, brickcityman (< 20) wrote:

Don't feel bad dwot...  Chances are you gave him a much needed chance to get his mind off of things and focus on something else.

 

I've had experiences like that in the past where even though it might not seem socially acceptable I just wanted to do something (work) in order to give my mind a break from going over all the things it was going over.

 

In my opinion, people often do a disservice to the grieving by treating them like they are excessively fragile...  While certainly some considerations must be made I think more often than not those grieving would rather not have so much attention placed upon them...

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#2) On June 14, 2010 at 3:53 PM, Lordrobot (89.73) wrote:

Your view of the quantity of the oil spilled v. collected is misappropriated. Initially the broken pipe was preventing a good bit of the oil from leaking. This is a pressure issue of 2222 psi of water pressure against a smaller opening with greater oil pressure. 

When BP cut the pipe... with the gov.'s approval of the plan, they stated clearly that additional leakage would result. 

The siphon speed does not just collect the oil that leaks, it creates a negative pressure like a straw and draws up the oil like you do when you drink through a straw. The object of BP is to create a greater negative pressure without causing a lot of sea water to come through the seal which would be prone to crating hydrates and may obstruct the siphon. Thus as a practical matter, if BP can bring on enough oil velocity with the negative pressure they can find the max point at which virtually all escaping oil is brought to the ships above without a lot of sea water. So the amount of oil collected has no relationship whatsoever to the amount of passive leakage.

In sum: THERE IS NO RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE AMOUNT OF OIL COLLECTED BY THE BP SIPHON TECHNIQUES OF HIGH VELOCITY NEGATIVE PRESSURE AND OIL LEAKED PASSIVELY BY THE WELL ALONE.

Yeah I know... math is poison; it is toxic to Green's vision of the universe.  

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#3) On June 14, 2010 at 4:21 PM, imobillc (< 20) wrote:

 Lordrobot 

Yeah I know... math is poison....

I understand your analogy but you must not have seen the other videos where they (BP) admit that maybe there is more than one leak. You are poisoned by your wrong math.... do you still believe 5000 barrels/day  x 30 days was correct.... I don't think so...

Math is not poison, the oil is the toxic poison.... stay away from the fumes!

Mars 

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#4) On June 14, 2010 at 4:23 PM, imobillc (< 20) wrote:

dwot (99.97)

Great post! 

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#5) On June 14, 2010 at 4:34 PM, rofgile (98.99) wrote:

Dwot,

 That is very sad about the loss of the student's father.  My condolences for him and heart goes out to him.  Perhaps because I am getting older, but this year seems like a great one for tragedies all around.

 BP's probably been leaking 40,000 or more barrels continuously for the last months, and will be probably till october is my guess.  I am praying that there is not a hurricane in the gulf this year.  Much of the oil is likely underwater in huge columns of death.  I hope to travel to the coast this summer and see first hand what it is like and perhaps help clean the beaches.  What a waste oil is!  Bring on the electric vehicles.  

To Lordrobot - bah!  Go stick your head in the oil.

 -Rof 

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#6) On June 14, 2010 at 4:34 PM, rofgile (98.99) wrote:

Dwot,

 That is very sad about the loss of the student's father.  My condolences for him and heart goes out to him.  Perhaps because I am getting older, but this year seems like a great one for tragedies all around.

 BP's probably been leaking 40,000 or more barrels continuously for the last months, and will be probably till october is my guess.  I am praying that there is not a hurricane in the gulf this year.  Much of the oil is likely underwater in huge columns of death.  I hope to travel to the coast this summer and see first hand what it is like and perhaps help clean the beaches.  What a waste oil is!  Bring on the electric vehicles.  

To Lordrobot - bah!  Go stick your head in the oil.

 -Rof 

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#7) On June 14, 2010 at 5:20 PM, TMFCrocoStimpy (93.77) wrote:

Dwot,

I lost my brother earlier this year, and just stood with his family at my nephew's High School graduation last week, and will stand at my niece's Junior High graduation this week.  I have little to share other than an understanding of you and your student's pain.

-Xander

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#8) On June 14, 2010 at 6:17 PM, dwot (99.49) wrote:

Thanks Brickmancity.

Lordrobot, I would disagree that there is "no" relationship.  I appreciate that cutting the pipe could have increased the rate of oil leaking.  

We did an exercise in class where we looked at the days of the leak, the coverage on top of the ocean and came up with an estimate of how much oil might be leaking.  I forget what we came up with, but the number was in the ten times higher then the 5,000 barrels per day.

From what I understand, the dome is not sealed.  I would agree with your view if it was sealed, but with water able to leak into the siphoning I don't see how they get sufficient negative pressure to dramatically increase the amount of oil coming from the well.

It was still shocking the amount of oil still spilling into the gulf when they were up to siphoning 15,000 barrels per day.

The other thing, maybe the report saying that cutting the pipe would increase rate of oiling spilling by 4-5% was a lie as well.  The percent increase given was small relative to the spill.

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#9) On June 14, 2010 at 6:30 PM, dwot (99.49) wrote:

Thanks  imobillc.

rofqile, my heart goes out to him and his family as well.  I never had children and I told my student that he'd grown into a fine young man and if I'd had children I'd have been very proud if I'd had a son like him.  He is a very nice young man, his parents did a great job raising him.

And I know what you mean by tragedies.  We had the older sister of another student murdered earlier this year, domestic violence.  In that way it hasn't been a good year.

Thanks TMFCrocoStimpy.  So sorry on losing your brother.  I lost my mom when I was in junior high so I too know what this whole pre-mature loss thing feels like.  

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#10) On June 14, 2010 at 6:55 PM, lemoneater (88.67) wrote:

Dwot, you said the right thing to your student. He will talk to you when and if he is ready. I still can remember the kindnesses of certain teachers at hard times in my life.

 

 

 

 

 

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#11) On June 14, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Lordrobot (89.73) wrote:

Dwot, fortunately when this case goes to court should Holder be stupid enough to try to take it to court, the amount of oil leaked will have to hold up against an expert witness like me that uses a fully acceptable Daubert standard.  

PB has admitted to 5000 bbls /day but the Gov would have to prove with a preponderance of evidence that it was more but for what purpose? To show that it was more oil or that the estimate was incorrect? But what purpose? Damages? The oceans are 340 quintillion gallons. Did your instructor in school explain quantities to you? Did they explain volume? Did your instructor in Marine Soft Science tell you that the oceans of the globe seep oil, more oil in a year that man has ever spilled in total? Did you read the Wood's Hole Research on the Santa Barbara seepage which runs between 4 and 80 Valdez spills a year, yet the Pacific emulsifies all of it without fanfare?

I am a scientist and you are going to tell me that you can "estimate" the oil by watching video from the BP roving cams? 

Or would you attempt to use the siphon as a means of calculating the spill. If you did any of those things, you were be laughed out of a court room. I have explained to you the principle of the siphon is to create a negative velocity that extracts as much volume from the well as possible to the extent that salt water would just barely be sucked into the siphon eliminating the leaking oil.

Undoubtedly you have drank through a broken straw at one point in your life. In order to prevent the straw from leaking, you have to apply more suction to the straw. If you apply too much suction to the straw you will get air bubbles in with the fluid. So this is how the siphon works. You can surmise all you want, you can postulate, you have have 20 Bishops swear that they believe you are sincere, but it only takes one physicist or mathematician to prove that there is zero relationship to the size of a leak v. a siphon collection.

I grasp, with a laugh that you are presuming that the oil pressure from the well pushes oil all the way up the mile long pipe and that the collection system on surface is passive. Astonishing the way the Green mind thinks. Do you have any idea of the kind of pressure that would have to be exerted on a solid such as oil in a column one mile in length and twenty three inches in diameter? I gave you enough to calculate it.  

How can a Green that has no understanding of the physical world make any cogent statements about the quantity of leaking oil based on the amount of oil siphoned to the surface with pumps. 

I would love to have your Marine Soft Science instructor come out here and explain to me their "method" of calculation. I am certain, I could demolish it in one glance.

 

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#12) On June 14, 2010 at 8:06 PM, TMFCrocoStimpy (93.77) wrote:

LordRobot, I am somewhat curious as to your background: are you actually an active scientist (R&D work somewhere) or an engineer of some type, or a practicing lawyer who had an academic background in the physical sciences before shifting to law?  Or some combination of the two?

-Stimpy

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#13) On June 14, 2010 at 8:51 PM, dwot (99.49) wrote:

TMFCrocoStimpy, looks like the kind of scientist for hire.  I say we looked at how much oil on the surface to estimate and he somehow reads or twists it to say we were looking at what was flowing from the video.  I say I don't see how you increase the flow from the leak without a seal and he somehow reads that I implied a passive flow of the oil pushing up.  We also did an exercise to estimate what the pressure down there would be and we came up with 2500-2600 psi for a mile deep. 

In any event, what they are talking about is 12-16 times the figure they stood behind for weeks.  Love the straw analogy, it reminds me of when we hooked 10 straws together and students tried sucking a drink from them.  There isn't a proper seal so you can't create the negative pressure required to increase the flow 12-16 times times the estimate.  

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#14) On June 14, 2010 at 11:57 PM, ralphmachio (24.29) wrote:

Lord Robot does a tremendous job of explaining why we mortals don't have any business even contemplating the size of this oil spill.  He exudes a convincing self-implied omniscience that just doesn't seem like it would be easy to refute.  

We can all do the math. 5000 barrels before, 50,000 now, supposedly because a kink in the steel tube is now straight.  

Lord Robot, riddle me this: What happens when a giant steel tube stuck into the ground gets pulled downwards by a giant oil rig? It might put a little stress on the ground directly around the 5 ft hole through which the steel casing is attached.  Just maybe this stress is enough to create multiple fractures in the sea floor, and the oil that is coming out of the tube is only a fraction of the spilled oil, and represents the easiest of the breaches to seal (still not completed).  Isn't this the reason they have not been able to seal this well? If they seal the tube, the entire well head might just have enough pressure to eject if the surrounding area has been compromised.  

Will BP be responsible for nearby breaches that occurred in the ocean floor because of their disaster? If a giant leak shows up two miles away, will they try to claim some silly statistic about how much oil naturally comes out of the sea floor? With a bunch of dead oily fish and birds floating in the background?

Processing power is not enough. If you have never had the right thoughts, all the degrees in the world will not help you to see the truth. Most highly educated are merely highly specialized for some function that benefits the source of all mans woes. So how impressed should we be? 

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#15) On June 15, 2010 at 12:31 PM, cthomas1017 (37.34) wrote:

Why is it that we humans are drawn to believe the worst in a situation so that it supports our world view?  It doesn't matter if it's the truth'ers or the birth'ers - one end of the political spectrum or the other extreme.  The media and politicians exploit and exaggerate.  Lordrobot's statements can be put into context, examined, and validated or discredited.

Lordrobot may have misconstrued or misinterpreted others' statements and/or hypothesis, but his perspectives do seem reasonable at first pass.  I'm, by no means, an authority that can dismiss or confirm his claims.  But his statements about natural leakage of oils into the oceans have not been disputed by anyone reputable to date.  At the same time, the Gulf of Mexico is more contained than the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, so the dynamics are not the same as in deep water, open ocean emulsification.  

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#16) On June 15, 2010 at 4:49 PM, imobillc (< 20) wrote:

To Lordrobot - bah!  Go stick your head in the oil.

From Mars... 

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#17) On June 15, 2010 at 8:45 PM, dwot (99.49) wrote:

cthomas, oil and gas is formed much deeper in the earth then where it is captured from wells.  It naturally seeps through the earth until it reaches something it can't seep through, or, for example, with the tar sands, it reaches the surface.  Tar sands is heavy oil because over time all the light oil has been able to evaporate.  You certainly can have the same kind of thing happening in the ocean, only it generally isn't going to be gushing out unless you have some other kind of event to cause it to gush out.  Over time oil and gas continue to seep into reservoirs, but the oil and gas industries drains the reseviors because they can get the oil faster then it can seep back in.

It seems to me that if there was validity to the claim about the amount of oil that naturally leaks into the ocean  is comparable to this BP leaking, well, we'd see more oil in the ocean and we'd never need to get oil from the ocean because the land resevoirs would replenish themselves.

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