Over two weeks offline and I'd hoped that the Gulf oil fiasco had come to some resolution" that at the very least, the gusher would have been stopped. Sadly that's not only not the case, but it's becoming more and more clear that we're not going to see any resolution soon, and possibly never.
First statistics have been released with new figures for the amounts of crude oil entering the gulf. Revised several times, each time the number increases, often exponentially. Science Daily today stated that as of June 9, the amounts of oil in the gulf could have, if used for fuel, powered 38,000 cars, 3400 trucks and 1800 ships for ONE FULL YEAR. And that's going with the latest figures, no doubt they'll be revised upward yet again
James J Corbett, a professor of marine policy at the University of Delaware supplied these figures, and has launched a website which reports the impact on a daily basis.
Horrific enough, there's another scenario being put forth by geologist Chris Landau, who believes there's another complication no one is talking about - which might simply mean the definitive death of the Gulf and potentially more connected waters. In an article for OpEdNews, Landau states:
My worst fears have been realized. If this link is true and the oil is coming through the sea floor, they have either blown out the formation or blown out the cement (which we know they did anyway to get the blowout to occur). I am beginning to realize why they have not wanted to close the valves on the cap. The more they close it, the more oil is going to come up through the sea floor, next to the well casing. I listed 12 points in my attached article. The really big concern here is that their directional wells are now pointless. They are GUARANTEED to fail because you cannot pump mud or cement into a blown out well. It just does not set with oil and gas roaring past.
The next biggest concern is that they have to get 8 new wells in immediately to relieve the background oil and gas pressure. The oil is going to start coming up at an ever increasing rate along the casing and the blowout preventer. The oil and gas is going to act as a high pressure pressure-washer and erode away all the sandstone and mudstone. There is nothing they can do about it.
This is also the end of B.P. The claims will go on forever.
But that's not even the worst of it!! There's the matter of whether or not the oil is fossil fuel (30 to 200 million years old) or oil which is being produced right now, in a different process which generates oil quickly. Very quickly.
Landau continues:
The oil is either old oil, say almost as old as the formation, or they have drilled into a massive active fault zone that is reducing carbon dioxide to methane. If it is high inhydrogen sulfide, it is reducing calcareous sediments to oil and more natural gas in the presence of salt solutions. Now they are providingmore saltwater, so via the Wurtz Synthesis more oil is going to be created than natural gas. The methane is going to be converted to ethane, propane, butane, pentane and other long chain organic compounds.You see if oil is being made now, at a very rapid rate in this area, the pressure is never, ever going to drop off along the casing and the oil is going to flow into the gulf forever.The only hope to reduce the pressure will be by sinking more new wells into this area and try and drain off the oil and gas as quickly as it is being made.
You see oil is basically inorganic. It is not made from dead squashed plankton. It is not a fossil fuel. It is an inorganic chemical compound reduced from calcareous sediments and carbon dioxide and methane gas. My peer reviewed published papers using chemical and thermodynamic equations show how this occurs. The link to the papers is available below. Of course although I was published by The American Institute of Professional Geologists in 2009 and the Association of Environmentaland Engineering Geologists in 2008, it does not mean that my theories are accepted by the majority of geologists. It will probably take 50 years, as with the theory of Continental Drift to get accepted by geologists in general. Maybe this disaster will shave off 20 years. Things evolve slowly in geology!
We can only hope it is old oil. We can only date oil back 100 000 years by carbon dating, but that is fine. We need to know if this oil is 10 to 100 years old and if its age is changing as it escapes. Is the escaping oil getting older or younger? So we need to start dating the oil on a weekly basis to see what is happening.
I volunteer for the job.
One last point that the public does not understand. It is not about deep water drilling where the problems have arisen. It is about high pressure oil and gas drilling that creates the problems. These zones can be found on land as well as at sea and can start from as little as 10000 feet, not the 20000 of this well. These high pressure wells have always been a problem. Of the millions of wells drilled, there are thousands of these ticking time bomb, high pressure wells in existence and new ones are being drilled every day. New risks are being taken daily.
I have also not found any evidence that BP or the government or any of the organizations involved here is even looking at bioremediation, a process I wrote about in two previous articles here linked above, and one which has been used successfully in numerous previous spills. So maybe it's not 100%perfect but it doesn't disperse oil, it EATS it and delivers oxygen and CO2. It saves the wildlife and habitat, and at this rate, could mean the difference between utter devastation and possible recovery.
Unfortunately the manufacturers of bioremediation products aren't movie stars. Turns out that Kevin Kostner's idea might be a good one, and it's been ordered now that he's finally testified about it. Do we have to wait till there's little left to save before we try everything?
I also received an email from the designer of the ElliotTube a flexible nylon hood which covers the area of oil release and channels it into an upright flexible nylon tube to the surface anchored by buoys at the surface. (I can supply contact info for Crown - just ask.)
From Elliot Crown: Sew together a 5000 foot long nylon tube with a diameter of 20 feet, and a flared end, with a diameter of 50 feet. Attach the flared end to the ocean floor over and around the leak. At the surface, oil can be pumped directly onto tankers from the tube. The mile long tube will bow in the current and tides, but may be secured to cables that are anchored and attached to large floating buoys. Additionally, at the surface, the tube can be buoyed and cabled to stationary ships for stability. Oil's density will add stability to the tube.
Crown has submitted this in detail to BP, NOAA and others, and has gotten support from UCBerkeley's Deepwater Horizon Study Group. Using this tube, there's no need for the oil to have hardware attached to stop it at least until they CAN figure out how better to do it than they've tried so far. This could buy us tons of time. But " it's also being ignored. We need outrage, or we're going to be seeing a very different world in 20 yrs than we now see. And we won't like it.
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