Oil spill following
an offshore drilling operation
in the Gulf of Mexico after a "blowout"
Posted online June 22, 2010
July 2, 2010: What solution?
July 17: Interview with an offshore drilling specialist
July 2, 2010:
An attempt to clarify the situation.
We shouldn't expect official media to provide accurate investigations into this Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Personally, I tried contacting people with experience in oil drilling issues, but without success. I therefore have no choice but to search for information on these techniques myself, citing my sources, with the inevitable trial and error.
What readers expect from me is that I try to distill a few key points in a simplified way. I've already shared my personal opinion on the possibility that oil—or at least a significant fraction of the hydrocarbons found deep underground—is not of biological origin.
Certainly, the biological origin of some fuels is beyond doubt, starting with
peat
, which forms over several thousand years from the decomposition of plant matter. It's said that if this same peat is buried and subjected to high pressure over a period of about a million years, it transforms into coal, passing through the intermediate stage of lignite.
June 24, 2010.
In fact, one can find numerous technical details on the English Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_explosion
The Deepwater Horizon platform, a semi-submersible
Full view of this giant during transport
After the explosion on board on April 20, 2010
Where the platform was located at the time of the accident
The explosion occurred 64 kilometers south of Louisiana. It killed 11 workers and seriously injured 17 others. The offshore platform burned and then sank. This type of platform was designed to conduct drilling operations on seabeds up to 2,400 meters deep. Positioned automatically via signals from a beacon near the drill head, the platform is relatively insensitive to sea conditions due to the high inertia of its semi-submerged ballasts (used for storing hydrocarbons, which are less dense than water: 0.9 instead of 1). It is theoretically capable of drilling up to 9,000 meters deep. Built in Korea, it was acquired by Transocean, which had previously set an offshore drilling record at a depth of 10,385 meters, measured from the ocean floor. The photo above refers to a drilling operation conducted on a seabed 1,500 meters deep. The exact depth of the drilling at the time of the accident remains unknown (official figures suggest 5,000 meters).
When the platform sank, the connection to the seabed was severed, and oil, gushing from the broken conduit, began spreading across the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. To date, this represents the largest ecological disaster the United States has ever suffered.
The part of the installation in contact with the seafloor (wellhead, or "drilling wellhead") was equipped with a BOP (blowout preventer) device designed to crush the drill pipe in case hydrocarbons suddenly erupted under high pressure. These devices can be operated from the platform or automatically activated via an acoustic signal detecting the sudden release of hydrocarbons.
Italian BOP device
It is unknown whether these safety systems were operational at the time of the accident.
What the media showed us were the unsuccessful attempts by remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) to manually operate the flow-closing mechanisms by crushing the drill pipe (attempts deemed laughable and "media-driven" given the massive size difference between these BOPs and the robotic grippers).
Size of these machines
Crushing can be achieved either by pinching or by tightening a self-locking device resembling camera diaphragms. They are designed to withstand pressures ranging from 300 to 1,000 bars and must be tested every two weeks.
By the end of March 2010, CBS's 60 Minutes program reported malfunctions in the safety BOP installed at the wellhead. Measures were taken, but
a June 2010 statement from the House Energy and Commerce Committee noted that in several cases leading up to the explosion,
BP appears to have chosen riskier procedures to save time or money, sometimes against the advice of its staff or contractors.
[34]
"BP opted for riskier procedures to save time and money."
According to eyewitnesses, what occurred on April 20, 2010, was a typical blowout, with a sudden surge of a methane bubble that ignited upon reaching the surface (upon contact with an engine). Methane has the same density as air and therefore cannot escape upward. The linked article mentions plugging a well with a nuclear explosion, carried out in Russia in 1966 using a 30-kiloton device lowered to a depth of 6 kilometers and placed 25 to 50 meters from the well. The method was implemented using a specially designed device after allowing the gas to burn freely in the air for years. See further down on the page.
One witness claimed to have heard someone shouting, "Are you happy? Say, are you happy? I told you this would happen!"
The fire quickly engulfed the entire platform, which sank two days later. What burned: surface installations; but also the oil stored in the buoyancy tanks. Survivors, taken ashore, were reportedly cut off from the press and their families, held captive in a hotel, and only released after signing a document, a claim denied by the company.
A conscientious news outlet could refer to this and produce an article summarizing the main issues. Likewise, since many Wikipedia-France articles are simple translations of English sources, it would be helpful if a French-speaking "Wikipedian" could create the French translation of this page.
Being "permanently banned" from Wikipedia for years—after revealing the identity of a fool—I cannot do it myself.
But the current topics in French media are the behavior of French football players during the World Cup, or the future wedding of Albert of Monaco.
Are these truly the main concerns of the French people?
I resume what I posted yesterday on another page:
June 21, 2010:
Apparently, things are not improving in the Gulf of Mexico. Alex Jones interviewed a man who claims to be getting information directly from people working at BP, British Petroleum (by the way, if you own shares, sell them all. Fortunately, I don't.)
You may have followed Alex Jones's interview with Lindsey Williams:
Lindsey Williams, interviewed by Alex Jones
What emerges from this interview is that this underwater oil eruption is due to an extremely deep drilling operation (10,000 meters, beneath 1,600 meters of water). This type of drilling, already conducted by the Russians up to 12 kilometers deep...