Also, if the estimates of 15% of the Exxon Valdiz spill still fouling the coastal areas off Alaska are to be believed, why is there cause to hope that this cleanup will have a better rate of success? Simply due to warmer temperatures, or has their been significant advances in the way we clean up oil spills since the late 1980’s?
This spill is much larger than that one, will cover a larger area and there’s the threat of currents distributing it all over the place as well as the possibility of hurricanes creating storm surges that send the oil further inland.
I guess what I’m asking is why is there more reason to hope this cleanup will go better than any other recent one?
Or they could stop dredging the Mississippi into the gulf and let it silt up so it naturally flushes through the marshland. Of course, all transoceanic shipping will cease on the river. I suppose they could cut a shipping channel at a diagonal to NO and lock everything through. That would probably take 10 years and a king’s ransom in public funds.
An interesting consideration to the marsh oil problem is the deliberate activation of the Bohemia Spillway systemto flush the marshes with Mississippi water. The article was written a month ago so I don’t know if it was tried.
The Flow Rate Technical Group has revised their estimates of the leak again. They now estimate the leak at 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day. Approximately 15,000 of that is being captured per day, so the remainder is obviously 20,000 to 45,000 barrels per day. Plans are in place to increase the ability to capture to 20,000 to 28,000 per day I believe starting today. It would then be increased to 40,000 to 53,000 by the end of June and 60,000 to 80,000 by mid July.
this just dawned on me, why don’t they drill 50’ from the current well head and pour concrete from there instead of the 3 month drilling project going on now? Obviously there’s a good reason for it but I’m curious.
It really wouldn’t change anything in terms of time the depth is the challenging part not the lateral distance. While it might save a couple of days to drill next to the well it would still take months due to the rate of penetration and other operations that must be done to drill a well to that depth (casing, BOP pressure test, changing drill pipe, etc. ).
It would hamper any remediation efforts to have the rig directly on top of the spill.
I’ll re-ask the question. why does it have to go down so far versus pouring cement at say 300 feet below the ocean floor. What is the reason for the depth? It seems to me that 2 intersects at 300 feet would immediately relieve the pressure on the current well head.
Satellite image of spill on June 19.
Looks like a steady state has been achieved in which everything from Louisiana to north Florida is under constant threat.
Compare June 12 image.
The Discoverer Enterprise is over the current wellhead. It’s pretty big and the drilling rigs are also large. They need some space between them for safety and to allow their support ships to maneuver between them. They aren’t really all that far apart. Pic. That’s a relief well rig in the foreground and the Discoverer Enterprise is the ship in the middle background. The other relief well rig is out of frame but I think it’s about the same distance from the Enterprise as the first rig.
They use drilling mud to counteract the pressure in the well and 300’ isn’t deep enough for the weight of the mud in the hole to balance out the pressure of the oil below it. Also, I think the seabed might not be strong enough at that shallow depth to handle the type of pressure the relief wells would put on it.
