BP Oil Well Leaking 5 Times Faster Than Estimated

Source: Bloomberg

A damaged BP Plc oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is leaking as many as 5,000 barrels of crude a day, five times more than previous estimates as the oil slick drifted the closest yet to shore, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

BP and federal officials have identified a third leak from the well and related piping, said Erik Swanson, a Coast Guard spokesman. The edge of the spill was 16 miles (26 kilometers) from Louisiana at 8 p.m. local time yesterday, David Mosley, a spokesman for the spill-response command, said this morning.

At that rate of leakage, by the third week in June it will exceed the 260,000 barrels the Exxon Valdez spilled in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989, the worst U.S. oil spill. BP has been unable to shut valves at the top of the well and said a permanent seal may take three months. It plans to begin drilling another well to stop the leak as early as tomorrow.

“If they don’t get that well capped soon, this is potentially a Valdez,” Robert Shipp, chairman of the department of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama said in an interview. Alaska’s habitat, which has productive fisheries, “doesn’t compare with the tourist and the beach economies of the five Gulf states.”


Read more: http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-29/bp-oil-well-leaks-up-to-5-000-barrels-a-day-five-times-more-than-estimate.html

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Drill, baby, drill!

:(

:(

to restore --

Insurance?

that BP does not insure its drilling operations...based on the odds of this kind of thing happening. It will absorb the costs....yeah right.

(I cannot remember the source but I believe it was NPR.)

And BP has been putting forth an alledged "green" attitude --

Err. no that was $1Bn per WEEK!!! and i'm talking PROFITS, not revenues.

wonder where all that cash went? up in smoke?

"Drill, baby, drill" --

12 posted on Thursday, April 29, 2010 12:20:12 PM by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
< Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies>
To: BAW

Am I the only one thinking sabotage?

:argh:

probably should fall into the same category as 9-11 "Truthers". The scale is far smaller - a seal team could take down an oil rig. Pulling off the 9-11 attacks would take orders of magnitude more co-conspirators and there's no way it would not have leaked.

Who benefits?

- The President and "never waste a crisis" Rahm? He DOES control the military and the CIA along with the rest of the executive branch. People rally to the President in crises; however, unless he was looking for an excuse to backtrack on the new drilling policy, it's certainly not worth it.

- "Drill baby drillers"? Just the opposite - it undercuts their case that it's needed and safe.

- Environmentalists? Fits the agenda if they are willing to sacrifice some to save the many.

- The one gay guy on the rig? Nah, "blame the queer" didn't work for the Navy.

- Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid? - Anything to divert attention from the midterms....

- Goldman - Sachs? Somebody worse than us....

- The Repugs? As long as they can blame Nancy & Harry.

- Iran? Wasted oil & possible cutback on drilling drives up world price. Better nuke 'em to be safe just in case.

- Israel? And make it look like Iran.

- And the winner... an 11-year-old hacker in California who was looking for neat games to play and thought "Oil Rig Self Destruct" was an XBox prototype.

Post .9 in this thread beat you to it:

> I wonder if their execs shorted their stock and sabotaged the well.

:rofl:

(I still enjoyed your alternatives though - thanks!)

hundreds of other rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Every rig is required to have a BOP.

so "smart" is the TV news coverage! we should a had all sorts of drawings and stuff about how these darn things are supposed to work.

found this article: (apparently bolts on BOP's are made of mud). this is a well known problem!

http://www.ipeia.com/Misc_Docs/2009%20Prinsloo.pdf

QUOTE FROM ARTICLE:
"Given a failure rate of nearly 50% of ¾” bolts from four wellheads in the initial stages,
the Owner was concerned that more blowouts could happen in the field"

What is the REAL story?

How much is REALLY leaking and should the people in Florida be bracing for an outright disaster?

then it was no leak. Etc.

The blast made a mess, and they guessed at 1k barrels/day to account for it. Then they didn't observe much expansion. After all, you can't go by thickness in any one spot, and you can't go by extent. You need a volume and then the change in volume.

Even today, with the "5k barrels" the government employee making the estimate said it was largely a guess. Which is exactly what BP said about its estimate.

Stay tuned for hard numbers as to how much is really leaking. Might be more, might be less. But since not giving any number is far worse than giving a wrong number--that's the way the media and public want it, inquiring minds and all that--we'll have to make do with what's undoubtedly a wrong number.

I wonder if their execs shorted their stock and sabotaged the well.

http://www.businessinsider.com/map-of-the-day-the-12-billion-oil-spill-courtesy-of-bp-and-transocean-2010-4

Two days ago the comment from the anchor was that "it might create fear that it could become a disaster".

Good thing thay were so blase about what was happening so that we didn't overly concern ourselves. I guess they were intimating that the problem was being handled with the necessary care it warranted.

*sigh* The fourth estate is criminal in its intentional negligence.

Mankind is bound and determined to ruin the Earth's environment.

Drilling a well in 5000ft of water is hard enough, stopping a broken one is that much harder.

I'm a little surprised overall at the lack of reaction on this, it's as if since it doesn't involve good 'ol Exxon, our favorite punching bag, it's not that big of a deal. Or maybe it's jut because it's only affecting the South and who gives a crap about them. I think the truth is that most people don't know enough about the oil industry to say anything other than "those greedy bastages!" and move on to whatever Sarah Palin was up to today.

That does it, I'm gorging myself on oysters tomorrow.

That's an awful lot of oil.