# Could the BP oil spill destroy ALL the world's oceans? Oh, and it'll be Obama's fault? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 2, 2010, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077 "2010-05-02T23:18:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2010, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/1 "2010-05-02T23:18:45Z")
A reader on a blog who claims to be an engineer thinks so. It’s a quote of a quote, so I really can’t say what the truth of it is, but here’s his argument: > [@](#): > > First fact, the original estimate was about 5,000 gallons of oil a day spilling into the ocean. Now they’re saying 200,000 gallons a day. That’s over a million gallons of crude oil a week! > > First, the BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. This it right on the edge of what human technology can do. Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it. > > When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean. > > Now they’ve got a hole in the ocean floor, 5,000 feet down with a wrecked oil drilling rig sitting on top of is spewing 200,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Take a moment and consider that, will you! > > First they have to get the oil rig off the hole to get at it in order to try to cap it. Do you know the level of effort it will take to move that wrecked oil rig, sitting under 5,000 feet of water? That operation alone would take years and hundreds of millions to accomplish. Then, how do you cap that hole in the muddy ocean floor? > > There just is no way. No way. > > The only piece of human technology that might address this is a nuclear bomb. I’m not kidding. If they put a nuke down there in the right spot it might seal up the hole. Nothing short of that will work. > > If we can’t cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this? Is this outlook accurate? Are we looking at the complete cleansing of all marine life on Earth? On a related note (because I felt another thread on this subject alone would be too much), I’ve already seen a CNN front page link calling this “Obama’s Katrina.” I saw another blog poster (on a liberal blog) say that this could cost Obama his Presidency, once people see how bad this is, and scapegoat him (since he’ll “have to reach across the aisle and not offend the oil industry”). What do you think? What more could he have done in the past few days? ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2010, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/2 "2010-05-02T23:33:12Z")
Interspersed with the usual backbiting and monomania, **El\_Kabong** and others have made some very informative posts on the potential causes of the explosion in this [Pit thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=561612). Given that he seems to be making that up out of thin air, I’ll take the rest of his rant with a grain or three of salt. It’s certainly going to be a major disaster; it will hardly destroy all the oceans of the world. I won’t venture a guess on how this will affect Obama politically. So far the administration appears to be reacting quickly and competently. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2010, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/3 "2010-05-02T23:41:36Z")
Yes, this guys is exactly right. I always trust anonymous bloggers over the NYT. “First fact, the original estimate was about 5,000 gallons of oil a day spilling into the ocean. Now they’re saying 200,000 gallons a day. That’s over a million gallons of crude oil a week!” Does this guy know the difference between a gallon and a barrel? ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2010, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/4 "2010-05-02T23:44:45Z")
Hey, many Republicans and conservatives already do! 😃 (This is another reason I put in the second question about political fallout for the President; not only is it related - in the sense that if it’s not as bad, the fallout isn’t either - but also just in case the anonymous dude’s argument was easily punctured. :)) ---
**Author:** ![Creole\_Tomato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a4c791/32.png) [@Creole\_Tomato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Creole_Tomato)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2010, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/5 "2010-05-02T23:46:32Z")
I wonder why he thinks this one will destroy the oceans, when the Persian Gulf spill of 1991 didn’t. I suppose the currents are involved? I know estimates of that spill vary considerably, but at a minimum tens of millions of gallons (and some say hundreds of millions) were spilled. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2010, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/6 "2010-05-02T23:48:13Z")
Here’s the blogger’s [first mistake:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_drilling_rig_explosion#Oil_spill) > [@](#): > > Volume and extent of oil spill > BP originally estimated up to 1,000 barrels of oil a day (1.84 litres/second) were leaking from the wellhead,[39] but by April 28, the NOAA said that the rate was probably five times that estimate, i.e., 5,000 barrels, or about 210,000 U.S. gallons… ---
**Author:** ![Nars\_Glinley](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nars_glinley/32/8177_2.png) [@Nars\_Glinley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nars_Glinley)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2010, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/7 "2010-05-02T23:55:36Z")
If wiki answers is to be believed, the volume of water in the oceans is 346,049,000,000,000,000,000 gallons. I think it would take more oil than from one well to destroy it all. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2010, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/8 "2010-05-02T23:59:28Z")
> [@Nars\_Glinley](#): > > If wiki answers is to be believed, the volume of water in the oceans is 346,049,000,000,000,000,000 gallons. I think it would take more oil than from one well to destroy it all. 346,049,000,000,000,000,000/250,000 is apparently many quarts would spoil the ocean. If it is 200,000 gallons a day, that’s 800,000 quarts a day… ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2010, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/9 "2010-05-03T00:01:22Z")
I wouldn’t believe any of this guy’s math. He started out mixing gallons w/ barrels. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2010, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/10 "2010-05-03T00:06:17Z")
I won’t address the oil quantity as that has already been addressed. > [@](#): > > First, the BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. The news reports I’ve read report a well depth of “only” 18,000 feet - that’s a significant difference from 30,000. Right there some fact-checking is called for. The same drill rig had gone down 35,000 feet a year ago _at a different well_. I will also add that that other well is apparently operating without a problem right now. > [@](#): > > This it right on the edge of what human technology can do. Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Actually, we don’t know what happened yet. Nobody does. It is premature to conclude this was due to excessive pressure from the oil source. There’s no way this guy could be certain as to the cause, as least not certainty based on actual facts. > [@](#): > > When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean. No, it didn’t. Yes, the rig sank and flipped over, and yes it’s now upside down, but it’s NOT “on top of the drill hole”. It’s about 1500 feet away from the well itself. > [@](#): > > First they have to get the oil rig off the hole to get at it in order to try to cap it. No, they don’t - because the rig is not on top of the hole. And they don’t just cap the gushing well - the drill a relief well first, to take the pressure off and control the flow, THEN they cap the well. > [@](#): > > Do you know the level of effort it will take to move that wrecked oil rig, sitting under 5,000 feet of water? That operation alone would take years and hundreds of millions to accomplish. Based on prior scenarios, _actual_ industry experts estimate 90 days to complete that operation, assuming nothing else goes wrong. That’s still disastrously long under the circumstances, but not “years”. And I don’t effing care if it costs BP “hundreds of millions” - the company has a profit of _billions_ in most years. > [@](#): > > Then, how do you cap that hole in the muddy ocean floor? This is not the first time an oil company has had to cap an ocean well. They’ve got the methods worked out. > [@](#): > > The only piece of human technology that might address this is a nuclear bomb. I’m not kidding. If they put a nuke down there in the right spot it might seal up the hole. Nothing short of that will work. Given this guy’s track record, specifically, getting the facts _wrong_ in a consistent manner, I can’t have any confidence in his proposed solution. Also, I can’t imagine that the radiation from even a relatively “clean” burst is going to make anyone happy. For damn sure, the authorities are going to try all possible convention mean before nuking the Gulf of Mexico. Look, the guy is wrong on some very basic, easy to confirm facts. He might even be an engineer, but this is clearly NOT his area of expertise. In which case, he’s no better than a layman. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2010, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/11 "2010-05-03T00:22:17Z")
Oh hell, I’ll have a quick go at this. The number of facts this guy has gotten wrong is stupefying, but just to name a few: [Quote=clueless mook] First fact, the original estimate was about 5,000 gallons of oil a day spilling into the ocean. Now they’re saying 200,000 gallons a day. That’s over a million gallons of crude oil a week! [/Quote] Early estimate was 1,000 bbl (42,000 gal) per day. Most recent estimate I’ve heard is 5,000 bbl/day (210,000 gal). Could be more, could be less. Can’t be accurately measured at this time. > [@](#): > > First, the BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. This it right on the edge of what human technology can do. The rig in question did in fact drill one of the deepest offshore wells ever constructed, but that was not the one that blew out. The well in question was drilled to about 18,000 feet total depth. Many wells are deeper, many have been drilled in deeper water (up to approx. 10,000 feet water depth). > [@](#): > > Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it. All oil and gas reservoirs are high pressure, relative to surface conditions. The blowout did not occur during drilling, but during the late completion phase of the well. It does not appear to have burst any safety valves; they either weren’t activated at all, were disabled by the blowout or blocked from operating by damaged equipment in the well bore. > [@](#): > > When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean. Absolute bollocks. The rig is laying on its side, more than a mile from the location of the wellhead. > [@](#): > > Now they’ve got a hole in the ocean floor, 5,000 feet down with a wrecked oil drilling rig sitting on top of is spewing 200,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Take a moment and consider that, will you! The writer is apparently confusing the blowout preventer stack and part of the marine riser above it with the rig itself. It’s good that the BOP stack remains on top of the wellhead; this may come handy later if and when some sort of capping operation begins. The riser, which basically is 20" ID pipe, probably can be cut away at some point to give more direct access to the wellbore. > [@](#): > > First they have to get the oil rig off the hole to get at it in order to try to cap it. No they don’t, as explained above. > [@](#): > > That operation alone would take years and hundreds of millions to accomplish. Then, how do you cap that hole in the muddy ocean floor? Could be months, actually, but highly unlikely to be years. OTOH, yeah, hundreds of millions in cost is pretty much guaranteed, as a minimum. Right now, BP is using two deepwater rigs, costing day rates of a couple hundred thousand a day, **each** , in the response effort. That’s not counting all the support vessels, ROVs, etc. currently at the site. > [@](#): > > There just is no way. No way. Actually, there are several ways, but they will take time and shedloads of money. A relief well, as currently planned, has a pretty good chance of success, but may take up to three months to drill followed by maybe a couple weeks to kill the well. BP will most likely try some other method simultaneously, in an effort to speed up the process. > [@](#): > > The only piece of human technology that might address this is a nuclear bomb. If they put a nuke down there in the right spot it might seal up the hole. Nothing short of that will work. You’re kidding. > [@](#): > > I’m not kidding. Oh. > [@](#): > > If we can’t cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this? Projecting the ultimate extent of oil slicks is not my area of expertise, really, but the reservoir that’s flowing is not some bottomless pit that will gush forever. Oil and gas make up only a tiny percentage of all the fluids in the earth’s crust. That plus the location of the spill mean that it is highly unlikely this spill would affect any area outside the Gulf of Mexico. I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, 😃 but jeepers. In any event, larger spills have occurred in the past so in theory the oceans of the world should have been destroyed a couple times over already. Lest anyone think otherwise, I full well recognize that this is an extremely serious situation with huge potential ramifications, both for the environment and economically. I’m just having a bit of fun with more over-the-top bits of the OP’s quoted post. Oh yeah, and in my opinion that guy that wrote the quoted material is an engineer like I’m an ex-Navy SEAL. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2010, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/12 "2010-05-03T00:24:24Z")
Damn you, **Broomstick** , I’ve got to learn to write faster. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2010, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/13 "2010-05-03T01:04:32Z")
I once tested out at 90 wpm typing - granted, I don’t think I’m _quite_ that fast any more, but yeah, I do write fast. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2010, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/14 "2010-05-03T02:09:08Z")
[quote=“Leaper, post:1, topic:538077”] On a related note (because I felt another thread on this subject alone would be too much), I’ve already seen a CNN front page link calling this “Obama’s Katrina.” QUOTE] [According to Media Matters](http://mediamatters.org/research/201004300043), this is Obama’s ninth “Katrina” to date. ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2010, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/15 "2010-05-03T02:24:27Z")
Isn’t that nukey-bomby thing how we got Godzilla? That didn’t work out so good. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2010, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/16 "2010-05-03T02:28:41Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Isn’t that nukey-bomby thing how we got Godzilla? That didn’t work out so good. For that matter, isn’t drilling a big hole in the ground and throwing a nuke into it how they blow up the asteroid in that Bruce Willis movie. Will splitting the Earth in two be Obama’s Katrina? (though I guess at that point, we’d probably rename Katrina “Bush’s splitting the Earth in two” rather then the other way around) ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2010, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/17 "2010-05-03T02:46:29Z")
I don’t think a nuke would actually do that much damage. 5,000 feet of water is one hell of a cushion. You’d kill a bunch of fish, but I don’t think it’d be all that dangerous. There’d be no fallout at all, and no one near the blast site. Any residual radioactive material would either be dissolved and diluted beyond our ability to measure or not dissolved and remain just about where it is. We understand nukes well enough today to minimize radioactivity, and no one would suggest using a [Tsar Bomb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba)- we have in the past made bombs with a yield of [less than a kiloton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29). And if you could get the bomb down into the well itself or into a parallel well within a couple dozen meters, it might successfully collapse it. At this point, you might as well just use conventional explosives, but there’s probably a range at which a nuke would work and conventional explosives wouldn’t. I’m not saying that we’re actually going to nuke the Gulf, if only for PR reasons. But nukes might not be the worst answer imaginable. ---
**Author:** ![Nars\_Glinley](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nars_glinley/32/8177_2.png) [@Nars\_Glinley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nars_Glinley)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2010, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/18 "2010-05-03T03:42:02Z")
> [@try2b comprehensive](#): > > 346,049,000,000,000,000,000/250,000 is apparently many quarts would spoil the ocean. If it is 200,000 gallons a day, that’s 800,000 quarts a day… 346,049,000,000,000,000,000/250,000 = 1.384196 × 10[sup]15[/sup] quarts. 1.384196 × 10[sup]15[/sup] quarts / 800,000 q/d = 1,730,245,000 days or 4,740,397 years. I’m sold. A nuke it is. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2010, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-the-bp-oil-spill-destroy-all-the-worlds-oceans-oh-and-itll-be-obamas-fault/538077/19 "2010-05-03T04:13:38Z")
> [@Nars\_Glinley](#): > > I’m sold. A nuke it is. It’s the only way to be sure.