Oil and natural gas drilling in U.S. waters

[Buster]

Buster- here are the facts.

View attachment 9213​

What did you use to put those pretty colors and arrows on that map?..Paint? I can do the same thing showing the oil slick will end up in the Ohio Valley...again Jim..I'm not bashing your interpretation..but you are over reacting to the issue and trying to support more the cause for Ethanoil...

 

[nnuut]

Enormous Oil Seepage in the Gulf of Mexico
June 20, 2007 |

Oil enters the marine environment from human activity and natural seeps. A National Academy of Science study recently estimated that about 47 percent of the oil entering the marine environment is a result of natural seepage from subsurface reservoirs. The Gulf of Mexico is an area where such natural seepage occurs at a very high rate. Of the 200,000 metric tons of oil seepage that is thought to occur each year, about 150,000 metric tons escapes from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.
http://geology.com/news/2007/enormous-oil-seepage-in-the-gulf-of-mexico.shtml

 

[nnuut]

Is this adding insult to injury?

Natural Oil Seeps in the Gulf of Mexico


A NASA Earth Observatory news release from February 3, 2009

Although accidents and hurricane damage to infrastructure are often to blame for oil spills and the resulting pollution in coastal Gulf of Mexico waters, natural seepage from the ocean floor introduces a significant amount of oil to ocean environments as well. Oil spills are notoriously difficult to identify in natural-color (photo-like) satellite images, especially in the open ocean. Because the ocean surface is already so dark blue in these images, the additional darkening or slight color change that results from a spill is usually imperceptible.

Satellite image of natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico by Jesse Allen, NASA. See zoomed-in below.

Satellite image of natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. Jesse Allen, NASA. See above for reference.
Remote-sensing scientists recently demonstrated that these “invisible” oil slicks do show up in photo-like images if you look in the right place: the sunglint region. This pair of images includes a wide-area view of the Gulf of Mexico from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on May 13, 2006 (top), and a close up (bottom) of dozens of natural crude oil seeps over deep water in the central Gulf.

The washed-out swath running through the scene is where the Sun is glinting off the ocean’s surface. If the ocean were as smooth as a mirror, a sequence of nearly perfect reflections of the Sun, each with a width between 6-9 kilometers, would appear in that line, along the track of the satellite’s orbit. Because the ocean is never perfectly smooth or calm, however, the Sun’s reflection gets blurred as the light is scattered in all directions by waves. The slicks become visible not because they change the color of the ocean, but because they dampen the surface waves. The smoothing of the waves can make the oil-covered parts of the sunglint area more or less reflective than surrounding waters, depending on the direction from which you view them.

The usual technique for mapping oil slicks from space uses radar, which bounces pulses of radio waves off the wave-roughened surface of the water and detects the amount of backscattered energy. The downside of using space-based radars to map oil slicks is that they don’t provide routine coverage of large areas, and oil slicks may evaporate or disperse significantly within a day. The researchers suggest that tracking oil slicks in the wide sunglint region of daily Terra and Aqua MODIS images may be a better avenue for comprehensive, near-real-time monitoring of large oil spills and natural seeps in marine ecosystems.

Satellite images prepared by Jesse Allen of NASA using data obtained from the Goddard Level 1 and Atmospheric Archive and Distribution System. Captions by Rebecca Lindsey of NASA. http://geology.com/nasa/oil-seeps/

 

[James48843]

What did you use to put those pretty colors and arrows on that map?..Paint? I can do the same thing showing the oil slick will end up in the Ohio Valley...again Jim..I'm not bashing your interpretation..but you are over reacting to the issue and trying to support more the cause for Ethanol...

Ok Buster- here is my source for wind and current data in real time:

http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/station_retrieve.shtml?type=Current+Data

Go take a look at the real time data off the wind sensing bouys in Mobile Bay, Fort Morgan, and Gulfport, Mississippi.

That's where I get those cute little arrows showing which way the wind is blowing...

And if you want to see seasonal average for ocean currents in the Gulf of Mexico, please, by all means, browse around here:

http://oceancurrents.rsmas.miami.edu/atlantic/florida.html

Where you will find real, historical ocean current maps like this one:
Notice how warm waters flow NORTH between Cuba and the Yacatan Peninsula of Mexico. Then the water moves down the coast of Florida, and out towards the Gulfstream current on the other side of Florida. Yes, it's a west to east flow, NEAR KEY WEST, as the water makes it's way out of the Gulf of Mexico.

View attachment 9218

Now, do you have any REAL data showing potential for the oil slick to end up in the Ohio Valley?

No?

I thought not.

Wake up Buster. This one is going to be incredibly, incredibly bad disaster. The oil isn't going to stop gushing out of that well for months and months and months. It's bad. Real bad. No, I'm not exagerating. Yes, it will eventually hit Key West. If not an entire slick, then at least ribbons of oil, and balls of tar, and all kind of yukky things. It's going to foul hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of beaches and coastlines before it's done.

And it has nothing to do with ethanol.

It has everything to do with OIL, large corporations, saving a few bucks, cutting corners, and the resulting disaster that follows from insufficient government regulation.

Over-reacting? I think not. We'll see. Time will tell.
​

 

[Warrenlm]

I'm glad we've been saving up for the huge cost coming. At least we have been avoiding adding costs to the nation's bills.

I'm wondering if BP has protected mother companies by corporate structure so that basically the insurers and the EPA Superfund are the only payers.

 

[James48843]

Enormous Oil Seepage in the Gulf of Mexico
June 20, 2007 |

Oil enters the marine environment from human activity and natural seeps. A National Academy of Science study recently estimated that about 47 percent of the oil entering the marine environment is a result of natural seepage from subsurface reservoirs. The Gulf of Mexico is an area where such natural seepage occurs at a very high rate. Of the 200,000 metric tons of oil seepage that is thought to occur each year, about 150,000 metric tons escapes from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.
http://geology.com/news/2007/enormous-oil-seepage-in-the-gulf-of-mexico.shtml

Relationship of size: They call this "enormous".

150,000 metric tons is about 1 million barrels of oil for the whole year, for the whole Gulf of Mexico.

This one well is spewing somewhere around 800 to 1,000 metric tons every day.

If it's 1,000 metric tons a day, this spill would be at a rate of 365,000 metric tons a year- more than DOUBLE what the entire rest of the Gulf of Mexico seeps through natural processes.

 

[burrocrat]

yeah what Warrenlm said.

what's the investing ploy to profit from this? have you ever tried to mop emulsified oil off of rock or beachs? try doing it in a stinky wetland full of snakes and bayou critters.

huge costs will be expended to try to mitigate this disaster, it won't be stopped soon so may as well profit from the newly created demand. this is sad, and going to get worse.

beyond the immediate priority of minimizing this incident, what do we do?

drill baby drill, or walk baby walk? or we coud just continue to pay through the nose at the pump and the irs window and get it from far away where someone else's habitat is at risk and we don't have to think about it so much.

it don't make sense to point fingers here, we all use petroleum to one extent or the other. so it's all our responsibility. once we make that leap then everyone should help pay for it, get ready for a raft of federal expenditures while a compartmentalized subsidiary of BP goes bankrupt.

 

[coolhand]

I pulled this off a blog...:worried:

The Oil Mess

12 days into the oil rig 'accident' events continue to evolve and weather is slowing down efforts to contain things, we have two interesting items to report that are not in the MSM yet...OK, three then.

1. While there are many reports on the 'net that the rig disaster was an attack by a North Korean mini-sub, and other such fanciful things, we have heard that a supply ship arrived just before the explosions and it was reported to be 'manned by all new people, nobody aboard was from the 'usual supply crew'. This purported industry source continues: there were a total of 14 explosions and these could have been cutting charges. Moreover, the shut off valve below the surface (5000 feet down) on the seabed is not longer controllable. Still, lots of disinfo and speculation scampering around the netosphere. While this is bad, it gets worse.

2. A reader who is an engineer of considerable experience says watch this one evolve carefully because it is destined to continue to grow and he shares this long (but worthy explanation why:

"Heard your mention of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this morning, and you (and most everyone else except maybe George Noory) are totally missing the boat on how big and bad of a disaster this is.

First fact, the original estimate was about 5,000 gallons of oil a day spilling into the ocean. Now they're saying 200,000 gallons a day. That's over a million gallons of crude oil a week!

I'm engineer with 25 years of experience. I've worked on some big projects with big machines. Maybe that's why this mess is so clear to me.

First, the BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. This it right on the edge of what human technology can do. Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it.

When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean.

Now they've got a hole in the ocean floor, 5,000 feet down with a wrecked oil drilling rig sitting on top of is spewing 200,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Take a moment and consider that, will you!

First they have to get the oil rig off the hole to get at it in order to try to cap it. Do you know the level of effort it will take to move that wrecked oil rig, sitting under 5,000 feet of water? That operation alone would take years and hundreds of millions to accomplish. Then, how do you cap that hole in the muddy ocean floor? There just is no way. No way.

The only piece of human technology that might address this is a nuclear bomb. I'm not kidding. If they put a nuke down there in the right spot it might seal up the hole. Nothing short of that will work.

If we can't cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?

We're so used to our politicians creating false crises to forward their criminal agendas that we aren't recognizing that we're staring straight into possibly the greatest disaster mankind will ever see. Imagine what happens if that oil keeps flowing until it destroys all life in the oceans of this planet. Who knows how big of a reservoir of oil is down there.

Not to mention that the oceans are critical to maintaining the proper oxygen level in the atmosphere for human life.

We're humped. Unless God steps in and fixes this. No human can. You can be sure of that.

 

[James48843]

Yeh.

What He said.

 

[James48843]

P.S.- Might be a good time to move to the "G" fund. When the world economies understand (which they don't yet) what this oil slick is going to do- I am thinking it will not be good for stocks in general....

By the way- have the closed the oil terminals off Gulfport MS yet? Shortages of gasoline ahead, if they can't keep the oil flowing in from tankers.

 

[nnuut]

It was GREENPEACE!!:worried::laugh:

 

[coolhand]

P.S.- Might be a good time to move to the "G" fund. When the world economies understand (which they don't yet) what this oil slick is going to do- I am thinking it will not be good for stocks in general....

By the way- have the closed the oil terminals off Gulfport MS yet? Shortages of gasoline ahead, if they can't keep the oil flowing in from tankers.

I had not been paying particularly close to attention to this disaster until the last couple of days. This looks to be a real game changer if it's as bad as some think. I must say though, my retirement account won't mean much to me if that engineer is on target with his assessment.

 

[CountryBoy]

Depending on how much panic or how big a crisis this turns into, a lotta folks are going to be laid off, because the oil industry and all the peripheral jobs is the major occupation along the entire Gulf Coast, except for Florida. This doesn't even account for all the oil that is shipped all the way to the Great Lake States and the Northeast.

If they begin shutting down terminals, that is a big indication that drilling is totally shutting down also. No oil, no need for refineries. This could make the Jimmy Carter oil embargo days look like a walk in the park.

This could be the crisis that Rahm was looking/wishing for.

 

[coolhand]

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/04/gulf_mexico_oil_spill_worst_case.html

 

[Buster]

Depending on how much panic or how big a crisis this turns into, a lotta folks are going to be laid off, because the oil industry and all the peripheral jobs is the major occupation along the entire Gulf Coast, except for Florida. This doesn't even account for all the oil that is shipped all the way to the Great Lake States and the Northeast.

If they begin shutting down terminals, that is a big indication that drilling is totally shutting down also. No oil, no need for refineries. This could make the Jimmy Carter oil embargo days look like a walk in the park.

This could be the crisis that Rahm was looking/wishing for.

As I stated before, it is a monster of a mess..really saddens me to know how much the wildlife is gonna suffer too, along with the people that depend on the oil industry and fishing industry there..Very sad indeed...But we must fix it and move on and try to improve offshore drilling safety and NOT stop it. I can only imagine OPEC is sitting around their Gold and Ivory palaces smiling ear to ear right now..

As I've been seeing, BP is really to blame for not following safety guide lines..just like that A-Hole mine owner in WV...they should pay dearly and hopefully not be allowed to pass the costs to the consumer of oil based products.

 

[Buster]

Now, do you have any REAL data showing potential for the oil slick to end up in the Ohio Valley?

No?​

I thought not.​

Wake up Buster. This one is going to be incredibly, incredibly bad disaster. The oil isn't going to stop gushing out of that well for months and months and months. It's bad. Real bad. No, I'm not exagerating. Yes, it will eventually hit Key West. If not an entire slick, then at least ribbons of oil, and balls of tar, and all kind of yukky things. It's going to foul hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of beaches and coastlines before it's done.​

And it has nothing to do with ethanol.​

It has everything to do with OIL, large corporations, saving a few bucks, cutting corners, and the resulting disaster that follows from insufficient government regulation.​

Over-reacting? I think not. We'll see. Time will tell.​

No Jim..You wake up..people on this board are seeing you again in your own little crisis world again..We know from all your rantings in the past about OIL and the crown jewel in your battle headgear for Ethanoil...We are wiser than you give the MB credit for..

You are over reacting and I will mark this post and re-post it for you when this is all under control....Make a bet with you (Remember, you lost the $5.00/ gallon bet too)..But if the Oil reaches KEY WEST and slicks up the beaches like you want us to think..I will LEAVE this TSPTALK MB and never come back...If you however are wrong about your shade-tree meteorological forecast that the OIL will Cover the Beaches of KEY WEST, then YOU LEAVE US, forever!!..Put up, or shut up....Well is it a deal?

 

[XL-entLady]

No Jim..You wake up..people on this board are seeing you again in your own little crisis world again..We know from all your rantings in the past about OIL and the crown jewel in your battle headgear for Ethanoil...We are wiser than you give the MB credit for..

You are over reacting and I will mark this post and re-post it for you when this is all under control....Make a bet with you (Remember, you lost the $5.00/ gallon bet too)..But if the Oil reaches KEY WEST and slicks up the beaches like you want us to think..I will LEAVE this TSPTALK MB and never come back...If you however are wrong about your shade-tree meteorological forecast that the OIL will Cover the Beaches of KEY WEST, then YOU LEAVE US, forever!!..Put up, or shut up....Well is it a deal?

Now THAT is a lose-lose deal if I've ever heard one!!! :worried:

 

[XL-entLady]

As oil spill nears Gulf Coast, experts issue dire warnings

May 1, 2010 5:56 p.m. EDT


"As Gulf Coast residents braced Saturday for the arrival of a massive oil slick creeping toward shore, one environmentalist warned that the effects of the spill could resonate in the region for decades...

"This has the potential of being truly devastating," Tom McKenzie, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Saturday."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/01/louisiana.oil.spill/index.html

 

[coolhand]

NOAA Web Update April 30, 2010
DEEPWATER HORIZON Incident

Situation – Friday 30 April – NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco spoke with fishermen in Venice, Louisiana today as the Deepwater Horizon incident grows.
Also visiting the spill were Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Admiral Mike Mullen, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Rear Admiral Mary Landry, Deputy Secretary of Interior David Hayes and Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Carol Browner. The Department of Defense authorized mobilization of the Louisiana National Guard to help protect critical habitats from contamination and assist local communities in the cleanup and removal of oil.
Oil continues to flow into the Gulf of Mexico at an estimated to 5000 barrels (210,000 gallons) per day from three leaks in damaged piping on the sea floor from the Deepwater Horizon incident recently declared a Spill of National Significance (SONS). NOAA is assisting the Unified Command in evaluating a new technique to apply dispersants to oil at the source - 5000’ below the surface, if successful this could keep plumes and sheens from forming. Work also continues on a piping system designed to take oil from a collection dome at the sea floor to tankers on the surface; this technique has never been tried at 5000’. Drilling of a relief or cut-off well is still planned - one drilling rig is on site and one should arrive this weekend, but the process will not be complete for several months. Aircraft have applied over 139,000 gallons of dispersant and will continue as conditions allow.

With shore impacts looming, more than 217,000 feet of boom have been assigned to contain the spill, with an additional 305,760 feet available. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries announced the closure of both recreational and commercial fishing in areas of likely impact and the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals closed molluscan shellfish (oyster) harvesting areas in the coastal parishes of Plaquemines and St. Bernard.

NOAA efforts have included: modeling the trajectory and extent of the oil, getting pre-impact samples surveys and baseline measurements, planning for open water and shoreline remediation, supporting the Unified Command as it analyzes new techniques for handling the spill and starting Natural Resource Damage Assessments (NRDA).

 National Weather Service forecasts persistent southeast winds through the weekend which will push surface oil towards shore and hamper surface recovery efforts until a forecast shift on Monday
 The Coast Guard is using forecasts and graphics of oil movement prepared by NOAA’s Emergency Response Division (ERD) and Marine Charting Division to keep mariners out of oil areas by depicting them on electronic charts
 Baseline aerial surveys to assess marine life continued today with personnel from NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), more flights are planned this weekend
 NOAA’s Assessment and Restoration Division (ARD) coordinated with natural resource trustees from five states and with Responsible Party representatives on seven resource assessment workgroups (birds, mammals and turtles, fish, shoreline habitats, water column injury, data management, and human use)
 NOAA and the Louisiana Department of Health and Human Hospitals gathered oysters and water and sediment samples in four commercial harvest areas
 An ARD natural resource economist arrives on scene tomorrow to lead a team that will evaluate spill related losses of human-use activities

BP is asking fishermen for their assistance in cleaning up the oil spill. BP is calling this the Vessel of Opportunities Program and through it, BP is looking to contract shrimp boats, oyster boats and other vessels for hire to deploy boom in the Gulf of Mexico. Fishermen should call 425-745-8017 about this program.

NOAA Roles: NOAA is a vital part of the massive response effort on the Deepwater Horizon incident. Many personnel are on scene and many more are engaged remotely, as follows:

Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R)
 Scientific support to the U.S. Coast Guard and Unified Command
Emergency Response Division (ERD)
 Predict where the oil is going and its effects
 Overflight observations and mapping
 Identify resources at risk
 Predict fate (chemical changes) of oil
 Recommend appropriate clean-up methods
 Manage data and information
Assessment and Restoration Division (ARD)
 Plan for assessment of injuries to natural resources
 Coordinate with state and federal trustees
 Implement sampling plans
National Weather Service
 Incident weather forecasts including marine and aviation
National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS)
 Experimental imagery for spill trajectory forecasts
National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
 Issues related to marine mammals, sea turtles, and fishery resources
National Ocean Service
 Public Affairs support to Joint Information Center

 

[Buster]

Now THAT is a lose-lose deal if I've ever heard one!!! :worried:

This town ain't big enough for the two of us..