[mcgowanjm]

I might regret this but jimmcg, here's one for you.

http://drillingclub.proboards.com/index ... 40&page=50

I can't really discount 100% what that horizon3 fellow is saying with what I know about it.
His theory could technically be true. The bp people who have much more info. than us internet dweebs would probably know for sure.

I haven't had a chance to check the ROV's for myself so I don't know for sure if there is any sign of oil still.
jimmcg, don't just post an old blog saying there are still leaks, go have a look for yourself and tell me what you think.
Even if there is a possibility of pressure releasing through that 16" csg. bullheading cement should get it and there should be no signs of oil at the wellhead.
As usual it is all speculation when you don't know the exact pressures and volumes bp is seeing.

Why thank you, MD.

I was getting ready to post Horizon's quote.
But you knew that I'd seen it.
I'm sure.
And you realize the implications as well(pun unintended, but I'll take it;}.
The US/bp have now foreclosed options favoring instead
a sarcophagus.
And Horizon and my opinion and I'm sure others, as you yourself entertained the notion, is that we now have a 'chernobyl' contained but 'functioning.
We now have no way, other than Both RW's now to control
the flow rate.
Or we have one more Abandoned Well Leaking. And I saw the ROV and oil is leaking, which means gas is leaking as well.

Maybe we'll get a temblor and the MT will slide over the whole thing, eh? Because it looks like that's the plan.
Cat 3/5's to scour, temblors/earthquakes/subsidence to
cover.

Why do I keep thinking of a salvage yard?


This ain't over, but I've learned when the public no longer
thinks an Event is Current. This ain't over, though.

It's a Dragon King/Watershed Event, and nothing will be the same going forward except America's attempts to stay ignorant.

My post from another site:

But sorta like 911, Iraq/Afghanistan, Katrina, it's gonna keep coming back.

The Macondo has at best been replaced by a sarcophagus. We have no idea where the mud/cement went.

And with everyone of these, that much science is being replaced with a witchdoctor brew of Imperial chicanery.

You know, when historians tell us the places like Rome, their collapse was sudden and complete? It's because All that was left at the Time in question was a scaffolding of words put out by the Last Senators standing/scrambling to hold onto what they thought was theirs.

Here’s how the New York Times reporter put it:The federal agency [Fish and Wildlife Service] charged with protecting endangered species like the brown pelican and the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle signed off on the Minerals Management Service’s conclusion that deepwater drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico posed no significant risk to wildlife, despite evidence that a spill of even moderate size could be disastrous, according to federal documents.

James

[Carlhole]

Energy Tribune

A 2003 research paper by Kvenvolden and Cooper in Geo-Marine Letters estimated that natural seeps dump 140,000 metric tons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico each year –over one million barrels of crude per year. In fact, the authors estimate that 47% of all the petroleum found in the sea is from natural seeps – the largest single source, ahead of airborne pollution, ground runoff and drilling/shipping accidents.

The Deepwater Horizon blowout has been estimated (at the high end) at 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 barrels of unrecovered oil, total. This is clearly a legally and technically unacceptable amount, but it is of a similar order of magnitude to the amount of oil the Gulf digests in its “pure” state in a year with no (man-made) oil spills at all.

Let's have a show of hands. Who thought the Gulf oil crisis would lead to some pre-doom doom?

I have to admit, I thought the disaster would mount to more than it has. I didn't realize that natural seeps were so very large.

[MD]

....
I have to admit, I thought the disaster would mount to more than it has. I didn't realize that natural seeps were so very large.

I did, but there's no stopping hysteria once it gets rolling along. Nothing to do but let it run its course.

[rockdoc123]

I have been busily trying to point out the fact that there are lots of natural seeps on many occassions to the doom and gloom crowd on several threads that address Macondo. They prefer to characterize any such claim as being defensive of big oil.

What is most interesting is that with this amount of oil continually added to the gulf the sea life has not suffered and the overall background content of bad news hydrocarbon related chemicals is obviously acceptable. What this must mean is that nature is effectively breaking the oil down and rendering it relatively harmless. I remember reading in a newspaper article early on in the spill cleanup that the tar balls which appeared on several beaches were not a new occurrence and locals noted they were a common occurrence before the spill.

I suspect that this will be the subject of great scientific review and debate over the next few years.

[eXpat]

Scientists cast doubt on claims BP spill's no threat to Gulf

WASHINGTON — Many scientists say they're skeptical of a widely publicized government report Wednesday that concludes much of the oil that gushed from BP's leaking well is gone and poses little threat to the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the "vast majority" of the 4.9 million barrels released into the Gulf has either evaporated "or been burned, skimmed, and recovered from the wellhead, or dispersed."

"I'm suspect if that's accurate or not," said Ronald Kendall, the director of the Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University and one of the scientists who testified Wednesday at a congressional hearing about the need for more research into the composition and use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil in the Gulf.

"It's an estimate and I'd like to say that even if it's true, there are still 50 to 60 million gallons that are still out there," he said. "It's too early to draw the conclusion that the coast is clear, but there are species there that will tell us.''

The White House used the report to boost public confidence that the accident at BP's drilling site, which killed 11 workers, fouled the Gulf, killed wildlife and disrupted the regional economies from Texas to Florida, is now behind the nation.

Many scientists, however, questioned both the rosy White House assessment and the administration's motives, timing and record of estimating how much oil was flowing from the well.
...
The government report also fails to account for the effect of vast, underwater plumes of microscopic droplets of oil that remain unmeasured, scientists said, and it downplays the potential long-term effects of the release of as much as 4.1 million barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Some 800,000 barrels were captured at the wellhead.

The remaining 50 percent in the water is the equivalent of almost eight Exxon Valdez oil spills, until now the country's benchmark environmental disaster.

"Now what we're hearing is they don't think the damage will be as bad as they initially thought," Steiner said. "We have to remember that the same thing was said after the Exxon Valdez. But much of the damage didn't become apparent until the second or third year."

Scientists also questioned the report's methodology.

"There is a lot of uncertainty in these figures," said James H. Cowan, Jr., a professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University,

For example, the report doesn't explain how its authors decided what was naturally dispersed oil and what was chemically dispersed oil. They gave no details of how they estimated the evaporation rate of oil — something that's difficult to do over large areas of seawater because of the effects of weather and other factors, Cowan said.

In the face of the criticism, administration officials bristled at questions about their findings.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/04/98658/scientists-skeptical-of-obama.html

[Carlhole]

....
I have to admit, I thought the disaster would mount to more than it has. I didn't realize that natural seeps were so very large.

I did, but there's no stopping hysteria once it gets rolling along. Nothing to do but let it run its course.

Matt Simmons, RIP, was clearly over-the-top when he predicted that the Gulf Coast would be "painted black", or that millions would be displaced inland or that the REAL hushed-up gusher was miles away from Macondo. I think he must have just decided to capitalize on the Gulf spill by being a sensationalist pundit.

Kind of calls into question his other pronouncements for me.

[dbruning]

In the face of the criticism, administration officials bristled at questions about their findings.

They have to expect people aren't going to take them at their word as the government rarely tells the public the entire truth, and with the BP incident I think they have many reasons to downplay the damage. We can thank BP's $$$ hard at work for that.

Since it should be a given BP will work to minimize their liability with all the resources they have available, I'm confident scientists and politicians have been well payed to play along.

The nice thing about this report is the fog it can be used to throw over the future. Rather than see the damage and admit "We did this, we will pay to fix it", instead we will get "A large percentage of this oil was caused to be here naturally, and as you know, the oil breaks down quickly so there is little harm involved. We'll pay as little as possible instead - good luck proving anything useful. Oh, and we're raising prices to offset anything we did have to pay. Have a great day."

Big business and politics...ug.

[Ludi]

I guess if a lot of poison doesn't hurt you, even more poison (including tons of poisons you're not adapted to, like, say dispersants) won't hurt you either!

Hooray!

[Graeme]

BP spill: The worst is yet to come

BP's "reckless quest" to drill deeper and cheaper than any other oil company has endangered not only the Gulf of Mexico, says Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, Julia Whitty, "but the largest, richest, most pristine, most biologically important, and last completely unprotected ecosystem left on Earth: the deep ocean." Marine life has been forever altered by the incalculable amounts of oil and other deadly chemicals currently saturating the water. "Never before in human history has the vast food web of the ocean—rooted in the dark, and flowering at the surface—come under so many assaults from below, above, and within," writes Whitty. So, please, ignore reports that this disaster has just mysteriously floated away. The ecological horror caused by the BP oil spill has only begun.

theweek

[mcgowanjm]

BP spill: The worst is yet to come

BP's "reckless quest" to drill deeper and cheaper than any other oil company has endangered not only the Gulf of Mexico, says Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, Julia Whitty, "but the largest, richest, most pristine, most biologically important, and last completely unprotected ecosystem left on Earth: the deep ocean." Marine life has been forever altered by the incalculable amounts of oil and other deadly chemicals currently saturating the water. "Never before in human history has the vast food web of the ocean—rooted in the dark, and flowering at the surface—come under so many assaults from below, above, and within," writes Whitty. So, please, ignore reports that this disaster has just mysteriously floated away. The ecological horror caused by the BP oil spill has only begun.

theweek

Thank you, Graeme.

The worst is yet to come. At least 20 million will be removed in the next 2 years. From the World Pop.

Then 70 million. To stabilize the World Human Pop.
That will be the OffSet Parabolic that has accompanied the
World Oil Discovery/Production Parabolic.

And as per Quantum Science and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Nothing stabilizes at Asymptote of
a Leptokurtic distribution/parabolic.

And more often than not, the previous 'stable ramp up'
will be overshot to the Downside.

Factoring in the Fat Tail Power Laws, meaning that the drop off will have a pronounced Non Linear episode shortly after
Asymptote and the Announcement of the Fat Tail was the
Deepwater Horizon/Dragon King, there will be at least a billion fewer humans in, say 20 years, minimum.

[mcgowanjm]

And somewhere between this:

"Everything's fine."

and this:

Every time Wells, Suttles, or Allen get in front of a microphone, everyone gets even more confused, mis-informed, or both; everyone just wants this to go away, but it's not going away; not until the relief well kills from the bottom as we've been saying for over 3 months.

In actuality, this "static kill" did nothing that BP and Allen said it would do. Certainly the well is not dead or "static". It hasn't accelerated the relief well, but it has obscured the well's pressures, making it more difficult to kill. Hence, these new tests to figure out what's going on. BP and the government don't really have a clue where the 2,300 barrels of mud and 500 barrels of cement went. They originally claimed it all went down the casing and out to the reservoir. I would set the probability of that actually having happened at zero.

...are 2 Groups of Psychopaths. The First Group actually thinks
it's doing a good job of saving the US/bp wealth, while
keeping the Well from Hell out of the news.

The Second Group is taking info from the first Group and
weaving a story line in case they HAVE to put out some news
that everything is STILL ok.

In the Meantime. the 2nd Group has 'The Truth is Replaced by Silence' program looping.
Which is a definition of Evil. Just sayin'.

[copious.abundance]

Well well, lookee what we have here - some really hungry microbes!

LINK

Microbes Ate BP Oil Deep-Water Plume: Study
Post a Comment By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
August 24, 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Manhattan-sized plume of oil spewed deep into the Gulf of Mexico by BP's broken Macondo well has been consumed by a newly discovered fast-eating species of microbes, scientists reported on Tuesday.

The micro-organisms were apparently stimulated by the massive oil spill that began in April, and they degraded the hydrocarbons so efficiently that the plume is now undetectable, said Terry Hazen of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

These so-called proteobacteria -- Hazen calls them "bugs" -- have adapted to the cold deep water where the big BP plume was observed and are able to biodegrade hydrocarbons much more quickly than expected, without significantly depleting oxygen as most known oil-depleting bacteria do.

[...]

[Plantagenet]

Well then. That takes care of that!---

[mlit]

Not saying if this is true or false but who is this scientist and what kind of data did he use to come up with this?
I personally think the gulf will recover fine but this story is pure crap without anything to back it up.

Oooh I'm a scientists and can get published in an AP story without anything but thoughts out of my pie hole

[efarmer]

They would be old bugs not new bugs that bloomed in response to a petroleum "feed".
It could be great news, or encouraging news hyped up to counter worst cased speculation.

[Dosadi]

This story is the most strange, retarded thing I have ever seen. I have never seen such hastily-slapped-together, ludicrous propaganda. It was bizarre seeing it all over the news sites today, all out in public in front of the world and everything.... I really have to wonder if whoever thought this up even cares about what people will take from it, it is so blatantly unbelievable. A brand new species, out of the blue, brought into existence by the mere presence of a rich "food source" (the oil slick). Someone thinks people don't know anything about basic biology, that is for sure. Someone somewhere must have really blown out over the subject of the remaining oil in the water and just started vomiting pseudo-scientific excuses. I am personally forced to assume that the problem of the remaining oil in the water is in fact really bad, and that someone in the government decided to throw out a hastily-prepared smokescreen instead of acknowledging the problem openly. Not good at all, IMHO.

Jon

[copious.abundance]

Here's a more in-depth article.
LINK

By contrast, Hazen’s team extracted microbial DNA from plume water samples, sequenced the genes and identified their functions. Many of the genes produce enzymes that break down some of the compounds in crude oil.

The researchers also identified a previously-unknown strain of ostensibly oil-gobbling Oceanospirillum that doesn’t consume oxygen. Its activity would have gone unnoticed by the WHOI team.

“That particular species becomes dominant in the plume. It out competes some of the other bacteria that are normally present. It can break down the oil quite well,” said Hazen, who noted that the Gulf’s deep-sea microbes have evolved to handle crude oil that seeps naturally from the seafloor.

When Hazen’s team put oil samples in a laboratory setup designed to mimic Gulf conditions, it had a half-life of between one and six days. And according to Hazen, the researchers have found no sign of the plume in the last three weeks, suggesting its breakdown.

[efarmer]

It does seem to be hastily worded and it is quite possible that seeing how easily hyped and credentialized the worst case potentials were, and how viral they became, we are simply seeing opposing proaganda. I do know that methodical, and patient science off the coast of California has determined that natural seeps are largely eaten by microbes and leave mounds of a material of what is not able to be eaten that resemble asphalt.

We have science and instruments and competing objectives and over time, we will have some truth.

In the interim, it seems the best case propaganda may be entering the media fray with the worst cased propaganda.