Louisiana Spill: Big Oil's Chernobyl?

Investors.com ^ | April 30, 2010 | INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY Staff

[Kaslin]

Energy: The administration has banned new offshore drilling until the Gulf oil spill is investigated. Was its heart in it anyway? It seems environmental concerns apply only to certain forms of energy.

No one pays much attention to the aquatic "dead zones" that have appeared off our shores at the mouths of our rivers due to agricultural runoff created by mandates for corn-based ethanol. Ethanol is green energy, good energy — never mind that such biofuels drive up food prices, increase hunger around the world and damage the environment in their own way.

The explosion that blew apart an oil rig off Louisiana's coast is far more dramatic and makes for better television. The resulting oil spill is a legitimate concern, as it threatens marine life and local economies. Our concern is that it will do more damage as a bludgeon that forever ends hopes of expanding domestic oil production.

President Obama on Friday announced the suspension of all plans for new offshore oil drilling until authorities learn what caused the explosion of the rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. Recently he had declared to great fanfare that certain offshore areas would be open to drilling.

[denydenydeny]

Correct. It’s an idiotic comparison. It’s more like Three Mile Island, in which no one was injured or was ever seriously at risk, but which destroyed the nuclear industry in America indefinitely.

[rwh]

At the stage of completion the well was at it would have made a poor target for sabotage. Most wells at the stage this one was in would have 100% isolation between the formation and casing. A more likely scenario is that the casing was somehow damaged while running it and a poor cement job, possibly caused by the damaged casing, allowed gas/oil into the casing. There are a number of scenarios that could have caused this, but sabotage would be extremely low on the list. The cause was probably a series a freak events that caused what we see today.

[Bean Counter]

Has anyone seen a decent graphic of any kind that shows approximately what the wreck looks like on the seabed, it’s relation to the wellhead and what debris they think is over the leak?? If you do please link or post it...

I would expect that every single marine salvage expert in the Country is on the scene or on the way, and there is a lot of high tech equipment out there in the industry that can accomplish some fairly amazing things.

Remember how we heard the oil fires in Kuwait would burn for a decade?? How long did it end up being in the end...8 months?

This is an unfolding disaster, but it is still manageable. I see no reason to compare this to Chernobyl in any way, and I have no reason whatsoever to believe this “crisis” will go on for anywhere near as long as Chernobyl has.

This is making a Gawd-awful mess but the sky is not falling.

[raptor22]

ping

[Recovering Ex-hippie]

And they have never worried about killing 11 innocents and burning coutnless other workers.

[danamco]

When was the last oil rig explosion and where??

[Boardwalk]

Good question!

[Freddd]

Obama lied, seagulls died.

[Boardwalk]

More like 0bama lied the eagle died.

[FreedomPoster]

Actually, there has been talk of putting a dome over it and capturing the oil from the dome.

[SunkenCiv]

I thought the Exxon Valdez was the oil industry’s Chernobyl.

[Retired Intelligence Officer]

They happen occasionally on land.

[left that other site]

I think we have had a few of those lately.

He hates coal too.

[Political Junkie Too]

Chernobyl was the result of plant workers not following procedures and ultimately causing the meltdown.

I think the oil rig explosion will be found to have been a surge of highly pressurized gas that entered the pipeline (remember the depths that we're talking about) and was larger than the equipment could handle.

Other than never being 100% certain of what the subsurface looks like, I'm betting that this took the workers by surprise. I think they were following procedurs by the book, but they got hit by that that 0.001% uncertainty that still exists when don't know for sure what it looks like under the surface.

-PJ

[rwh]

I’m sure with sufficient research one could find the last rig explosion. It happens. Luckily safety measures are put into place to limit the risk of migrating well bore fluids/gases from causing what happened on the deep horizon. Unfortunately, sometimes they fail too.

Saboteurs could blow up 1,000 wells at the stage this well was in and probably not achieve the results that happened here. Casing was run and the cement had some 20 hours to set up. That said wells can kick after it is cemented and it has happened-

MMS Safety Alert No. 165, issued in April 1995 identified 20 diverter incidents in the Gulf of Mexico from 1973 to 1995 related to well kicks after cementing surface casing. Another 13 similar incidents have occurred since 1995, with the most serious consequences being broaching the surface, cratering, well loss, and rig and platform destruction by fire. Annular flow related to cementing surface casing has been identified as one of the most frequent causes of loss of control incidents in the Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/offshore/safety/safealt/SA_216.html

And here is a list of various incidents that have happened offshore including blowouts and rig losses. feel free to peruse them if you want. You might learn something -

http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/offshore/safety/safealt/safemain.html

[Boardwalk]

Perfect!

[The Cajun]

Casing was run and the cement had some 20 hours to set up.

Wonder if they ran a "cement bond tool" on wireline to verify the cement job was good?

[rwh]

That list is just related to surface casing cemented. This well had production casing ran and cemented. I don’t know how many blowouts occur after production casing is cemented but it is going to be an extremely rare occurrence. Because it is so rare the rig crew is go to be less concerned with a loss of well control at this point and a blowout was probably the last thing on their minds.

[chooseascreennamepat]

“unless the work crew was covering it up. “

Unless the crew were already dead. Bang-Bang.

I am not normally a conspiracy freak but this + the other oil rig that toppled make for a fishy odor. Great excuse for getting out of his ill advised (per the envirowackos) approval of off shore drilling.

[2harddrive]

As a Jewess in the US, I believe the platform was sunk by a North Korean Stealth Torpedo, the 2nd test of the same type that they used to take out the South Korean Navy ship last month.