Posted on 05/19/2010 5:03:27 PM PDT by FootBall
Gulf oil spill leak now pegged at 95,000 barrels a day Renee Schoof - McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — The latest video footage of the leaking Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico show that oil is escaping at the rate of 95,000 barrels — 4 million gallons — a day, nearly 20 times greater than the 5,000 barrel a day estimate BP and government scientists have been citing for nearly three weeks, an engineering professor told a congressional hearing Wednesday.
The figure of 5,000 barrels a day or 210,000 gallons that BP and the federal government have been using for weeks is based on satellite observations of the surface. But NASA’s best satellite-based instruments can’t see deep into the waters of the Gulf, where much of the oil from the gusher 5,000 feet below the surface seems to be floating.
Federal officials testified in hearings on Tuesday that they were putting together a crack team to get to the bottom of big the spill really is. That effort comes a month after the April 20 explosion that triggered the unprecedented oil spill in deep waters of the United States. Experts say knowing that amount is crucial for efforts to cap the broken wellhead and to monitor and clean up the oil.
Steve Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, earlier this month made simple calculations from a video BP released on May 12 and came up with a flow of 70,000 barrels a day, NPR reported last week. Werely on Wednesday told a House Commerce and Energy Committee subcommittee that his calculations of two leaks that show up on videos BP released on Tuesday showed 70,000 barrels from one leak and 25,000 from the other.
He said the calculation could be off by 20 percent — meaning the spill could range from between 76,000 to 104,000 barrels a day. But Wereley said he would need to see videos that were not compressed and showed the flow over a longer period so that it would be possible to get a better calculation of the mix of oil and gas from the wellhead.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who chaired the hearing, promised to get that information from BP and make it possible for other scientists to use other methods to get a more accurate calculation of the size of the spill.
“The true extent of this spill remains a mystery,” Markey said. He said the BP had said that the flow rate was not relevant to the cleanup effort. “This faulty logic that BP is using is … raising concerns that they are hiding the full extent of the damage of this leak.”
There is a lot of oil down there. If they can just get this thing under control, there is a lot of oil down there.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't hear any shrill ranting from the left on this, no panic, no mass insanity of the sort that announces global warming, or global cooling, or whatever the crisis dujour is.
This is Obama's "Katrina," and Obama is in his White House, and all is well with the world.
Am i missing something? I thought they inserted a tube and was collecting most of it?
Such a waste!!!
Some enterprising yacht owners should start *CRUDE CRUISES*
where we all go out with buckets and bring back some barrels of crude - sorta like gold bullion.
I’m in;)
I thought someone suggested that there is a lot of gas and not so much actual oil. It would make the flowseem to be greater than it is.
I don’t know but that is a huge amount of oil in any case.
I thought we were supposed to have run out of oil by now?
The oil is under pressure and exiting at a very high velocity, through a narrow orifice. There is no way to discern how much of the flow is gas and how much of it is oil. I think anyone who testifies that he knows the flow rate is ‘mis-speaking’.
They claim to be collecting around 2,000 barrels per day. A small percentage if it is around 100k per day.
Below is a video showing how simple mathematics were used to calculate 97,000 barrels per day.
Why can’t BP calculate flow rate?....Maybe a lie is better than the truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_HVH82A6wI
They’ve even suspended the laws of physics for this one.
They’ll resurrect Carl Sagan to explain it to us.
You rock!
If the entire 21” tube were flowing full of oil, in order to get 2 million gallons a day, the oil would have to flow around 2 mph.
Only half the tube (by diameter, not area) flowing oil, 7 mph.
Only a quarter the tube flowing oil, 28 mph.
I looked at the video and tried to guess on the speed. Very, very difficult. The gas is flying out of there (my chemistry is sketchy, but I think it is expanding and becoming increasingly lighter than water, and boyancy is a factor). The oil itself is crawling out at a much lower speed.
I swear I read somewhere that BP expected the well to produce 60,000 barrels a day, with a full intact riser...so any number higher than that is sketchy.
This is something bigger than Katrina if they don’t get this stopped. The heavy oil has hit the marshes now.
I think had the oil hit the coast immediately they would have been ranting and raving but because it’s taken a month to make landfall so to speak the sheeple have moved on for the most part.
http://www.wwltv.com/video?id=94332629&sec=554827
“I swear I read somewhere that BP expected the well to produce 60,000 barrels a day, with a full intact riser...so any number higher than that is sketchy.”
Maybe they could produce 60K per day. (controlling the well)
Seems to me it would not be safe to run the well full open without having some man induced limiting control over the flow.
Maybe another 30K barrels leaks due to manmade limit controls being damaged or not online anymore.
“I swear I read somewhere that BP expected the well to produce 60,000 barrels a day, with a full intact riser...so any number higher than that is sketchy.”
Maybe they could produce 60K per day. (controlling the well)
Seems to me it would not be safe to run the well full open without having some man induced limiting control over the flow.
Maybe another 30K barrels leaks due to manmade limit controls being damaged or not online anymore.
They actually have no idea. Liberals hate oil companies - except foreign ones and never take the time to learn about it or what really happens.
When the media speaks, stop listening. It is like the AZ law they spoke against for two weeks now, never even having the common sense or respect to read the simple 10 pages.
But they voted on a 2,700 page medical bill.
Throw the bums OUT.
I always thought a leak was a leak. Now it seems the leak has grown from 5000 to 10000 and now 95000 barrels a day.
Is the ocean floor erupting? Where is all the missing oil?
with that rate world will blast through peak oil any minute now
any minute
Ok, the flow yellow ball in the video is moving at 2.87 feet per second, just about 2 miles per hour.
Filling a barrel in 0.89 econds equals 6.3 cubic feet per second, and this will happen at a flow velocity of 2.87 fps when flowing through an area of 2.17 square feet, or a 20” diameter pipe...
So, this calculation assumes the pipe is flowing full.
I’m not defending BP, but whoever made this video is being just as dishonest himself. It looks like at least half the flow is gas (and the velocity he derived seems to be from the gas as well)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
