Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BP finally stops oil spewing from Gulf gusher

news.yahoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 61 posts

Re: BP finally stops oil spewing from Gulf gusher

#51

Post by gloob »

whatajoke wrote: post #45
ck2 wrote: post #37

Except there are probably dozens of little leaks all over the pipes from the failure event. That's what they kept arguing why the couldn't just close the top, it would make all the little leaks into big leaks. So basically they've just shut off the one that was getting the most attention. Geez the amount of wildlife they have killed - no-one will go to prison and it's practically the crime of the century.

> Geez the amount of wildlife they have killed - no-one will go to prison and it's practically the crime of the century. The Iraq invasion by USA happened in this very century.

So did 9/11, for that matter, which probably outranks the BP thing in many people's minds.

Re: BP finally stops oil spewing from Gulf gusher

#53

Post by adolph »

dedward wrote: post #52

Anyone notice the BP or whoever spokespeople deliberately referring to it as "Hydrocarbon release" rather than "Oil volcano" or "oil spill" now? "uncontrolled hydrocarbon emission" and things like that..... that MUST be a deliberate PR move.

The terminology is more correct, even if it sounds more weasel-y. If they said "oil spill" then someone would be complaining about them being inaccurate and ignoring all the other hydrocarbons that come out of the well, like natural gas.

Re: BP finally stops oil spewing from Gulf gusher

#54

Post by warfangle »

ars wrote: post #41
Psyonic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Can something of this magnitude even ever be completely cleaned up?" Likely no. Certainly improvements can and will be made, but there will be irreversible damage, at least on a human timescale.

Within a year or two you will have to search hard (i.e. dig) to find evidence there was ever a leak. This is not the first time oil has leaked. It's biodegradable, the damage is totally reversible. Just look at the history from the ixtoc oil leak (about the same size as this one). There was pretty much no long term damage at all. At the bottom of the sea the oil will probably last for a while, but it'll be buried ver…

ixtoc was not "about the same size" as this one.

Ixtoc was: 3 million barrels over 2,800 km^2.

Deepwater Horizon is (so far): ~8.7 million barrels (100,000 barrels * 87 days) over 6,500-24,000 km^2.

It's nearly an order of magnitude more significant than the Ixtoc spill. And we're not even sure it's capped, yet.

(according to wikipedia, anyway)

Re: BP finally stops oil spewing from Gulf gusher

#55

Post by invisible »

code_duck wrote: post #32
ams6110 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crude oil is a natural substance. It leaks out of the earth all over the place. This is obviously an extreme case, but I think that with time, the environment will absorb this and return to some sort of normalcy.

There is never going to be a return to normalcy for this area. It has already been under relentless pressure from human activities, to the point where we have a dead zone the size of Rhode Island floating around near this area already due to criminally irresponsible over-use of agricultural chemicals. Way too much pollution has already been coming out of Houston and New Orleans for a long time. BP wasn't satisfied du…

You are ranting and I honestly don't understand your need to compare an oil spill to a specific tragedy of radiation poisoning or an individual dying from exposure to oil. Oil spills are dangerous and hurt the environment greatly in the short term, but we are talking about a small region of the entire ocean that (while beautiful) doesn't sustain the large portion of the world's ocean.

Saying "never" and "always" is just a way to push propaganda unless it can be proven otherwise.

Re: BP finally stops oil spewing from Gulf gusher

#56

Post by ars »

warfangle wrote: post #54
ars wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within a year or two you will have to search hard (i.e. dig) to find evidence there was ever a leak. This is not the first time oil has leaked. It's biodegradable, the damage is totally reversible. Just look at the history from the ixtoc oil leak (about the same size as this one). There was pretty much no long term damage at all. At the bottom of the sea the oil will probably last for a while, but it'll be buried ver…

ixtoc was not "about the same size" as this one. Ixtoc was: 3 million barrels over 2,800 km^2. Deepwater Horizon is (so far): ~8.7 million barrels (100,000 barrels * 87 days) over 6,500-24,000 km^2. It's nearly an order of magnitude more significant than the Ixtoc spill. And we're not even sure it's capped, yet. (according to wikipedia, anyway)

If anything that means this ones is much less severe - it's more diluted.

And 3 times larger is not an order of magnitude.

Remember: the more diluted, the faster it will be gone. As long as they have oxygen, bacteria will eat it. By diluting it more, there is much more oxygen available.

Re: BP finally stops oil spewing from Gulf gusher

#57

Post by stcredzero »

yardie wrote: post #43
DaemonXI wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It better be federally mandated. Lord knows the industry won't do it on their own. Case in point: BP oil disaster.

That blow out preventer was federally mandated. As was the dead backup battery. The thing about mandates is they are easy to write. It's the enforcement that has the problem. If you look at every airplane crash, exclude pilot error and rare weather events, you will find the remainder were due to lax maintenance. Federally mandated lax maintenance.

Maybe we need to clue in the insurers? If I were writing insurance for a blowout, I'd want a petroleum company to be in the consortium I described. Hell, I'd help run it! I'd make damn sure they were doing rigorous research and engineering. (And hardware testing!)

Re: BP finally stops oil spewing from Gulf gusher

#58

Post by uxp »

qq66 wrote: post #48
stcredzero wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think the industry should put together a consortium that develops and builds such equipment and keeps it ready to go in the event of deep-water well failures like this. Seems like a lot of trial and error and onsite improvisation and engineering were done after the disaster. If it had been done ahead of time, then we may well have gotten to this point perhaps weeks sooner. A lot of oil might not have been spi…

If a private company had built such a cap and kept it on standby, they could have probably sold it to BP for over $20 billion.

I'm a liberal, but I really don't like reading or watching liberal biased news constantly. It's as uninteresting and un-though-provoking as watching conservative shows all day.

That said, Rachel Maddow compared this gulf oil spill to the gulf oil spill of 1979 by using news clips from then, and the sad part is, the new technology we used for this spill is the exact same technology they used back then. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo

Re: BP finally stops oil spewing from Gulf gusher

#59

Post by [deleted] »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #13
shaddi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everything goes well, they (Adm. Allen) announced they would be leaving the cap in place. Only if things go wrong will they reopen the seals. Even if they need to reopen it, the plan is to capture the oil into ships using pipes connected to this new cap. Edit: I can't remember the source for this; I believe I heard it on the Diane Rehm show yesterday. If I can find the source I'll update.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/15/gulf.oil.disaster/index.htm... "BP cautioned that the oil cutoff, while welcomed, won't go beyond the 48 hours." Yeah, you're right... it did go on to say that 'valves' will be opened and oil would be siphoned off. I didn't realize there were going to be pipes either. :)

[deleted]

Re: BP finally stops oil spewing from Gulf gusher

#60

Post by uxp »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #13
shaddi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everything goes well, they (Adm. Allen) announced they would be leaving the cap in place. Only if things go wrong will they reopen the seals. Even if they need to reopen it, the plan is to capture the oil into ships using pipes connected to this new cap. Edit: I can't remember the source for this; I believe I heard it on the Diane Rehm show yesterday. If I can find the source I'll update.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/15/gulf.oil.disaster/index.htm... "BP cautioned that the oil cutoff, while welcomed, won't go beyond the 48 hours." Yeah, you're right... it did go on to say that 'valves' will be opened and oil would be siphoned off. I didn't realize there were going to be pipes either. :)

Thinking from an engineer's perspective, this cap has effectively shut off oil flow from the wellhead. We've heard before, that the pressure of the oil spewing from the wellhead is very high. Possibly the reason that this well has had so much trouble to begin with. So the longer this cap prevents oil from leaking out, the longer there is a possibility for the pressure to cause damage to the cap and start the cycle all over again.

It seems like a very responsible thing to open up some valves on the cap and collect some oil to reduce the pressure on the cap.

Post reply on HN