Official Simtroplis Gulf Oil Spill Thread

[JanYpe 17]

Originally posted by: Duke87

We can't clean all the birds. And even if we do, well, that isn't really helpful as we can't exactly release them back into the wild. Their habitats have been destroyed; they have no way of getting food, water, or shelter. Any animal coated in oil is a lost cause, plain and simple.

Anyways... did anyone else watch Obama's little speech?

The good points:

- it's nice to see him taking some visible charge of things

- the honesty in acknowledging that this is difficult and we aren't really sure what we're doing is much appreciated

The so-so points:

- concerns about sustainable energy are valid, but it just feels like taking political advantage of the situation to be raising them now

- on that note, it's nice that he wants to move forward with such things, but I don't see a coherent aim herequote>

This is exactly the time to raise concerns about sustainable energy, since the spill pushes one of the dangers of fossil fuels in the spotlight for all to see. If you don't now pick up a megaphone, shout in their faces and make that connection, the public will once again just stick its head in the sand and pretend that oil is cheap, plentiful and safe.

The bad points:

- all this blaming BP for everything and wanting to "make them pay" is unproductive and needs to stop (for now, at least)

- the rhetoric that we're "at war" with this spill is ridiculous, especially coming from a man who will not use the same terminology about fighting terrorism

quote>

I agree that it's unproductive, but in the end he's just lying in the political bed your system has made for him. Or did you expect Obama to throw himself to the wolves by suggesting that maybe, just maybe, self-regulation for companies and minimal government intervention isn't always the best answer?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, Obama is making what few little waves he can.  You have to remember that most presidents don't take a swipe at earlier ones probably on the grounds of not having all the facts.  One of the biggest problems with politics at the highest level is that people like POTUS are controlled by the information they get, which is often inaccurate and untimely.  In the case of Dubya, we don't really know if he was mushroom managed into the Iraqi adventure, or he really wanted to have a nice little war.  You can't tell what these guys are thinking any more than your pet dog.

One of the greatest problems people in the highest level have is that they have to delegate most things in order to get anything done at all.  A lot depends on trust, and it only take one bad egg in the mix to ruin the cake.

Taking a shot at BP is not good politics.  There are so many players on that team that shooting the coach won't help them towards a win.  The gulf coast is ruined for many years to come.  BP should foot as much of the recovery as possible, but we are talking decades if not centuries, and the loss of wildlife species can never be recovered.  It will be interesting to see what nature uses to fill in the vacuum when a sustainable ecology appears.

This mess is a good example of why being President of the United States is an exercise in masochism.

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[Duke87 1,070]

Eh, plug the hole first, worry about who to blame later. BP has certainly been involved in some poor conduct, but now is not the time to be lynching them for it.

Besides, we can't hold anyone liable for anything without going to court, and we can't convict anyone of any crimes without a trial. This idea that Obama is making BP set up an escrow account to pay for damages is just abuse of power. That is the job of the judicial system, not any executive figure. He has no constitutional authority to do that. BP could easily refuse to comply, they just aren't going to and the president knows it.

I do want to see a criminal investigation of BP (and Transocean, and Haliburton), but not until after we've stopped the leak. And hey, because I'm a fair man, I want to see an investigation of the MMS, too. Everybody who did something wrong has to be held accountable.

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

Personally, I do not understand this defense of BP. While we all (should) know that there are three separate companies involved (BP, Halliburton, and Transocean), it is BP who over-rode the concerns of even shoddy Halliburton to design this platform without safety fall-backs. They are certainly to blame for this problem and no one who pays attention disputes that.

Now, the real reason why there is such animosity toward them is because of how they are handling it. Did any of you know that BP has turned down voluntary offers of help by experienced groups and individuals? Did any of you know that BP is restricting access to impacted US beaches, and controlling photography? Did any of you know that BP has continually mislead the public by under-reporting the amount of crude being released daily?

You know, I could care less about how BP is treated in this fiasco. They are making efforts, sure, but many of them are half-assed and it takes only a blind idiot to not see that they don't know what they are doing.

Barbarossaquote>

This misrepresents the situation somewhat.  First, no one knows exactly how much oil is leaking daily.  Yes, BP's estimates have been lower than what the government has suggested, but the government estimates have been all over the map.  Both BP and the government are taking guesses as to the amount of oil flowing daily as neither party really knows.

Second, this is a disaster situation that the world has never seen before, so no one has any real concrete solutions for solving this.  Considering the relative inaccessibility of the ruptured well head, a good amount of dumb luck is involved in pulling off these shutdown attempts.  Ask engineers with a few decades of experience, and there is a good chance that they'll tell you that never having the opportunity to test the techniques being used and having to rely on a certain level of blind luck is a good way to look like you don't know what you're doing.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The unfortunate adventure in the Gulf of Mexico can easily be a warner for those who would be warned.  The Canadian government has been grilling Chevron quite hard over their arctic drilling permit applications, and are really bouncing them hard on contingency planning.  Don't be surprised if off-shore drilling gets slapped with a moratorium by the international community.  This will really put paid to any shoddy practices that may be traced to BP and its consortium.

[morriswalters 16]

I agree with Duke, however it may be difficult for someone seeing their life destroyed to be so sanguine about it.  I'm more concerned though that we have no national plan.  If we are going to drill and I see no way around it, the the safest assumption  is to assume the worse and prepare.  Congressional testimony seems to indicate that the Oil Companies paid lip service to disaster planning,  but no real thought. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Maybe the problem is that FEMA has no teeth?

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[Voar Tok 4]

JanYpe: The issue with the regulation is not that it doesn't exist.  The energy industry in the US is regulated quite heavily.  The problem is that the regulators weren't doing their job.  When BP had their Texas City accident, there were regulations on the books before saying that they couldn't have offices right next to blowdown stacks, but BP did it anyway.  And the government didn't bother to stop them.  That's the exact same thing that happened here.

Nonny Moose: Love it or hate it, the law of the sea isn't the same anymore.  The only way that the skipper is truly the head of the ship is if he owns the ship.  If the ship is owned by a company, he's nothing more than mid-level manager and no more in charge than the head manager at Best Buy.

Barbarossa: Another reason why people are hating on BP is what sort of compensation packages BP is offering.  For example, BP was (may still be) offering people a paltry $5,000 in exchange for not suing them.  Then they wondered why it is that no one wanted to take that offer.  Just about everyone and his brother who has any connection to seafood is going to be suing, and BP seriously thought that people would be interested in such a small amount.

[Meg 368]

Originally posted by: Voar Tok

. . . BP seriously thought that people would be interested in such a small amount.

quote>

Seriously?   They are that out of it?

I know a truck driver up here in Maryland who is out that much.   He works for a company that flies seafood up here in Maryland and then he hauls it by truck to wherever.   He says the shipments stopped shortly after the explosion.

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

Are you implying that no one has the intelligence to determine the spill-rate?  The fact is that no one (whether BP or governmental) has gone out of their way to pin it down.  It isn't rocket science.  quote>

Blunt Answer:  Yes, I am implying that.

More Accurate Answer:  There is no technique available to either BP or the government that will give them an exact idea as to the spill rate.  Every technique out there requires quite a bit of guessing.  The most advanced tool available involves ultrasonic imaging of the oil plume.  There are two major problems with this method.  First, since they can't actually see into the oil plume, there is no way of knowing exactly what is inside it, and if there is something inside it, whether it will affect the accuracy of readings.  Second, this technique requires reading the acoustic signature of the oil plume; that signature has a very high change rate, and the larger the plume, the faster that rate change charges off to inifinity.  This results in unholy amounts of data that can only be crunched by computer systems with semi-infinite processing power, all the while making the assumption that there were no unaccounted for variables that have messed up the readings.  Once a model has been made, more data has to be plugged into the model, again hoping that no significant variables were missed or are otherwise wrong.  Then, finally, you read the results of the work and come up with an estimate.

At this point you might be wondering why I bolded that one sentence in particular.  It is at that point in the process where everything tends to go to hell in terms of getting an accurate flow rate value.  It is possible to build the model without too much being wrong with it, but the small errors are still there and if there are errors in the values that you plug into the model (and there most likely are errors), the effects become multiplicative and things can very easily balloon out of control.  Again, look at the government's own spill rate estimates.  These results are being produced by teams of people who are experts in their field, and they are making mistakes all over the place with their estimates.  Furthermore, when they do more or less settle on an estimate, it will very likely be a range of flow rates and not a single flow rate, further illustrating what I said earlier--they have no idea how much oil is really coming out of the well head.

You're right that it isn't rocket science.  It's much, much more complicated.

If we are going to allow private corporations to rape our resources, then they should have already had a solution in place prior to any catastrophe.quote>

 

The only way BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, or anyone else can be expected to have a solution to a problem like this is for them to purposefully cause an oil well rupture at 5,000 feet and then try to shut it down.  You can expect them to have a plan for such an event in case it happens, but that's all it is.  They can't be sure it will work until they've had the opportunity to try it in the real world and see if it actually does work.

[sneakeypete 16]

Barbarossa: first you imply that BP is purposfully underrepresenting the spill rate, now your saying that they're not and instead should be able to determine it better? make up your mind...

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[sneakeypete 16]

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

Did any of you know that BP has continually mislead the public by under-reporting the amount of crude being released daily?quote>

That, perhaps.

Putting foward your best estimate is not misleading anyone.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

So this led to another question that perhaps someone can answer.  If BP was working this platform for however long, wouldn't they already know the pressure of the crude coming up?  Is there something else in the process making this an unknown?  They may not have known the condition of the pipe, but that was cleared up soon enough.quote>

It should be easy to calculate a flow rate based on pressure differential and head losses.

However, this only works if all head losses are known values. There may very well be some unknowns in there which brings the calculation back to taking guesses. Based on simple human bias, BP's estimates are probably low, but other estimates may well be high.

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

So this led to another question that perhaps someone can answer.  If BP was working this platform for however long, wouldn't they already know the pressure of the crude coming up?  Is there something else in the process making this an unknown?  They may not have known the condition of the pipe, but that was cleared up soon enough.quote>

BP knows the pressure of the well (or at least the did till the thing exploded on them).  That isn't enough to tell them what the flow rate is, however.  There are other factors at play, such as viscosity of the crude versus water, water pressure, the effects of water currents and their influence on the pressure relationship between the well and the water around the well, and many other factors.  Some of these factors are easily knowable; others, not nearly so much.

This is not a simple matter of college level fluid mechanics.  If this was a controlled flow of oil, BP would have a very precise estimate of the amount of oil spilling out of the well.  However, this is an uncontrolled flow problem, and those problems can't be solved with traditional fluid mechanics physics.

Most people don't appreciate how difficult these types of uncontrolled flow problems can be.  A little story to help put things in perspective:  With the advent of low-flow toilets, toilet manufacturers realized they needed to be more efficient with the water they had available to them.  It was at this point that Kohler realized it couldn't even adequately explain how the water flowed out of its own toilets.  The company now has 3 PhDs in the R&D department whose sole job is to analyze toilet bowl designs and understand how the water flows out of them.  One of these PhDs quite literally used to work at NASA as a rocket scientist and was responsible for designing rockets that would be sent to other planets.  He has gone on record saying that explaining how water flows out of a toilet bowl is more math intensive than putting a rover on Mars.  If it's that difficult to understand what fluids are doing in a semi-controlled environment like a toilet bowl, how much harder is it to know what's going on in a completely uncontrolled environment that's nearly 1 mile underwater?

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: hym

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

So this led to another question that perhaps someone can answer.  If BP was working this platform for however long, wouldn't they already know the pressure of the crude coming up?  Is there something else in the process making this an unknown?  They may not have known the condition of the pipe, but that was cleared up soon enough.quote>

BP knows the pressure of the well (or at least the did till the thing exploded on them).  That isn't enough to tell them what the flow rate is, however.  There are other factors at play, such as viscosity of the crude versus water, water pressure, the effects of water currents and their influence on the pressure relationship between the well and the water around the well, and many other factors.  Some of these factors are easily knowable; others, not nearly so much.

This is not a simple matter of college level fluid mechanics.  If this was a controlled flow of oil, BP would have a very precise estimate of the amount of oil spilling out of the well.  However, this is an uncontrolled flow problem, and those problems can't be solved with traditional fluid mechanics physics.

Most people don't appreciate how difficult these types of uncontrolled flow problems can be.  A little story to help put things in perspective:  With the advent of low-flow toilets, toilet manufacturers realized they needed to be more efficient with the water they had available to them.  It was at this point that Kohler realized it couldn't even adequately explain how the water flowed out of its own toilets.  The company now has 3 PhDs in the R&D department whose sole job is to analyze toilet bowl designs and understand how the water flows out of them.  One of these PhDs quite literally used to work at NASA as a rocket scientist and was responsible for designing rockets that would be sent to other planets.  He has gone on record saying that explaining how water flows out of a toilet bowl is more math intensive than putting a rover on Mars.  If it's that difficult to understand what fluids are doing in a semi-controlled environment like a toilet bowl, how much harder is it to know what's going on in a completely uncontrolled environment that's nearly 1 mile underwater?

quote>

well if they know how big the pipe is, theres only a certain amount that can flow out of it at any one time right?

they have a HD camera pointed at the ruptured pipe, the pipe is  known diameter and they can see how fast

the stuff is spewing out. should be easy to get a volume from that info.

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: Easy Bakes

well if they know how big the pipe is, theres only a certain amount that can flow out of it at any one time right?

they have a HD camera pointed at the ruptured pipe, the pipe is  known diameter and they can see how fast

the stuff is spewing out. should be easy to get a volume from that info.quote>

Simply trotting out a velocity and a cross sectional area isn't going to cut it for finding the flow rate, otherwise every first year engineering student with a $1 calculator could give them a precise (notice I said precise, not estimate) answer as to how much oil is flowing from the well.  Seeing as experts in the field are having difficulty coming even coming up with an accurate estimate, one can logically assume it isn't as simple as it looks.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

For example, what about pressure differentials between the oil pool and the water at that depth.  Looks like a nice set of partial differential equations on that point alone.  Then there is viscosity, temperature, partial pressures of components, etc.  It is a nasty problem in dynamics, and I wouldn't want to find it on an exam.

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Does anyone think that a $29Billion slush fund held in escrow will come anywhere near paying for all the damage?

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

Does anyone think that a $29Billion slush fund held in escrow will come anywhere near paying for all the damage?quote>

not even close when they keep refusing help from outside partys to help the clean up.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

A little light relief to the discussion of a serious problem...

The Front Fell Off

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: abcvs

A little light relief to the discussion of a serious problem...

The Front Fell Off

quote>

That sounds so much like some Monty Python Bit

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Thanks, Craig, this discussion needed that.

I suppose if anything fell off here, it was BP's diaper.

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[Duke87 1,070]

What I don't get is why the refusal to let outher countries help out.

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[tjh876 31]

We are what, about 60 days into this, and there is approx. 2.5 million gallons spilling out per day? This number grows everyday, and it should actually be decreasing. The CEO of BP doesn't seem to care if they are making nonsense commercials and all the big shots of BP live 3-4000 miles away, not being effected that much. This is just what makes me mad.