Professor: Low pressure reading may suggest well has lost power

Okay, so I think I understand this. May not need help from the experts.

One possibility is the well may have deflated over time and isn’t as powerful as it once was. Like when you have to pee real bad and at first it all comes out fast and then slows down to drip.

The other is that the well is damaged below the surface and pressure is dropping because the oil is leaking from another point under the seafloor and “into the rock formation surrounding it” which sounds a little awful and hard to cap. Perhaps the relief well would stop that if it is at a lower point on the first well than the hypothetical breech. Not sure if that’s correct. I’m not an expert.

In reference to the depleted well, a man by the name of Don Van Nieuwenhuise and the title of Director of the Professional Geoscience Programs at the University of Houston said…

I don’t think it’s a cause for immediate concern, because it could reflect a natural loss of oil in the resevoir. It’s amazing that it has held its strength for as long as it has.

Or in other words, “That thing sure spit out a lot erl didn’t it? Didn’t expect it would go THAT long.”

Hopes high for cap on well, but testing delayed

Maitri or Clay or anyone else, I’m reading this article and, really, I am skimming the whole thing trying to get to the part about the relief wells, which I have been told over and over again is the “real solution.” So I find them at the bottom of the article and there is a paragraph that confounds me and I need some help with it.

Wells said work on the first relief well, expected to be completed in August, was delayed while officials prepare for the integrity test out of an abundance of caution. It is possible, though unlikely, that shutting in the well as part of the integrity test could cause the back side of the relief well to be blown out, Wells said.

I am supposing correctly that the relief well must be close enough to the first well (feet? inches?) so that the pressure applied by capping the wellhead would be enough to blow out the side of the well into the first relief well? And if so, then what happens?

I have been meaning to post this since last week…

India pledges new aid for victims of Bhopal gas leak

It’s 26 years later and it is still being hashed out in court.

The human toll of the Union-Carbide disaster was far greater than the Gulf Oil leak but the principles are similar. A foreign-run company perpetrated an industrial disaster on a citizen-represented country. The horrific thing is, considering the amount of suffering they caused, UCC and its executives fought it out in court and pretty much got away with it. They built a hospital, they paid out a few thousand to each family and about a billion to the Indian government. I say “got away with it” because pay-outs aren’t enough. Union Carbide Executives should go to jail in India. I also say they got away with it because Union Carbide was in such decent shape business-wise that they were bought by Dow in 2001 even though the fallout from the Bhopal disaster was still in court. Who would buy a corporation that had industrial disaster cases still in court? Who would buy a company with the reputation of Union Carbide? A company who knew the fight was fixed is who.

Just last month, a few Indian executives were convicted and sentenced to two years but freed on bail shortly after. They are in their 70s now. They are appealing.

Also, when I was hunting links, I found this story which also compares the two disasters…

India fury over US ‘double standards’ on BP and Bhopal

The article inexplicably states that Barack Obama has been tough on BP. Perhaps it seems that way in India but from down here in Louisiana I can assure my fellow citizens of the World, the US Government will treat us the same way it treated you. That stance is just for show. No one will suffer but us just as no one suffered but you.

I still don’t understand how a Supertanker skims oil. I hear that it is here. I hear that it is huge. I hear that it’s called A Whale. I understand it can hold a lot of oil. But how does the oil get from the surface to A Whale. Best I can find is this…

If approved, A Whale – which has a main stack decorated with a blue whale – would be used near the wellhead, where the oil is the thickest on the surface but where boat traffic is also the heaviest. It uses 12 large intakes to collect surface oil in its path.

Also from that article…

The A Whale, for its part, could collect more than 125 times the amount of the largest skimmer currently working the Gulf. It’s capable of slurping up 300,000 barrels of oil (21 million gallons) of oil in 10 hours, and offloading it to a companion vessel, A Elephant. Mr. Su is already readying two other retrofitted tankers, the B Whale and C Whale, for service in the Gulf.

It’s got a companion called, “A Elephant.”

Article: A Whale to the rescue: Can super-skimmer turn tide of Gulf oil spill? (Christian Science Monitor)

A Whale Specs Link

I have been listening to Tom Ashbrook’s “On Point’ show out WBUR in Boston for a while now. It normally features a range of timely and cerebral topics and Ashbrook and the staff at On Point have been kind to New Orleans over the years. Last week they focused on leadership in the aftermath of the oil spill. President Obama’s speech is critiqued and the guests were outstanding:

Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University. His books include “The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America” and “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.”

Naomi Klein, bestselling author and columnist for the Guardian and The Nation. She’s author of “No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies” (just reissued for its 10th anniversary) and “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” She has been reporting from the Gulf on how the oil spill is affecting people and the environment.

Julia Reed, author of “The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story” and “Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomenon.” She was born in Mississippi and lives in New Orleans.

I greatly encourage everyone to download the podcast of this episode and in particular listen to Doug Brinkley at the 21:15 mark until the 25:45. He is worked up and says what almost every New Orleans blogger has been saying for a while, right down to the exasperation. “Be Walt Whitman.”

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 10:00 AM EDT
Leadership, the Gulf, and Obama