Oil Well Hit By Fatal Explosion Produces Slick The Size Of Hong Kong

[Purveyor]

Source: TIMESONLINE UK

An oil slick covering 400sq miles is threatening a slow-motion catastrophe for the Gulf of Mexico’s delicate marine life, with 42,000 gallons (160,000 litres) a day now gushing from an uncapped well after a rig explosion.

Two days after declaring that there was no leak and that oil on the surface was residue from on board the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform that burst into a fireball on Tuesday, officials revealed that the slick was coming from the seabed and was now 25 times the size it was on Friday.

“It’s 1,000 barrels emanating from 5,000ft below the surface,” said Rear-Admiral Mary Landry, of the US Coast Guard, who is overseeing the emergency response. “Absolutely, this is a very serious oil spill.”

BP, which leased the rig, said last week that it was doing everything in its power to contain the spill and resolve the situation “as rapidly, safely and effectively as possible”, using underwater robots, 700 personnel, five aircraft, 32 vessels, and nearly 200 miles of floating booms.

Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7107956.ece

[tosh]

1. Holy Crap!!

[rfranklin]

2. Ever been there? Hong Kong is very small...

A patch of land the size of a Pampers is worth a million bucks.

[Purveyor]

5. Around 420+ square miles iirc. Still, a large and growing patch of oil, indeed! eom

[petronius]

16. I was kind of wondering that - oil slicks are bad, but Hong Kong is a strange

spatial reference. Kind of like "Not far now! just 150 furlongs!"

[CreekDog]

21. 426 square miles or about 10 times the size of San Francisco

twice the size of Chicago.

it's big.

[petronius]

22. SF I can visualize. Why didn't that silly British paper use a normal

American city as a reference? ;)

[CreekDog]

20. It's almost as big as the City of Phoenix and bigger than Dallas

and how big should an oil spill be? :wtf:

:banghead:

[Purveyor]

3. Also Read: BP's Gulf Oil Well Leak May Take Months to Shut

April 25 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc said it may take at least two or three months to drill a relief well to stop a 1,000- barrel-a-day oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico after a drilling rig caught fire and sank last week. The company is also trying to shut the well's valve with robots.

The oil spill, which covers 600 square miles (1,554 square kilometers), won't reach a shoreline within the next three days, said Charlie Henry, a scientific support coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during a teleconference today. Henry said it isn't possible to give estimates beyond three days.

Swiss drilling contractor, Transocean Ltd., is shipping in two rigs to stop the leak with the first scheduled to arrive tomorrow and the second May 2. The companies may need a relief well if the blowout valve isn't activated. A relief well would intercept the leakage and inject a heavy fluid to prevent oil or gas from escaping, London-based exploration company BP said in a separate statement. That would allow the well to be sealed.

"The relief well as described could take several months," Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer of exploration and production, said on the teleconference.

The response group, including BP and Transocean, began using remote operated vehicles at 8 a.m. local time today to try to switch on the blowout value, part of a 50-feet tall and 18- feet wide housing on the sea floor. It may take 24 to 36 hours to complete the work, Suttles said.

State of Louisiana

In some sensitive areas, Louisiana state authorities have begun installing booms, a type of floating net used to trap and gather any spilled oil on the water, as a precaution. Of the 600 square mile spill, 97 percent is considered oil sheen, or thin layer, above the water.

With more than 1,000 people working on the operation, costs total "several million dollars" so far, said Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry, who is overseeing the rescue and cleanup.

Oil is leaking out in two places at the site, said David Nicholas, a spokesman in London for BP, which is responsible for the cleanup. Thunderstorms, rain and rough seas are hampering efforts to clean up the spillage, according to a statement today from the Coast Guard, BP and Transocean.

The accident took place off the coast of Louisiana, where exploration was being carried out on the Macondo field. BP, the biggest oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico, had leased the Deepwater Horizon rig from Transocean for drilling.

The spill is about 30 miles from the coast, Landry said. It's unknown when the well can be capped, she said. The 1989 oil spill by the Exxon Valdez dumped 260,000 barrels near Alaska.

MORE...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/04/25/bloomberg1376-L1GEGS07SXKX-1.DTL

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

4. So there must be much more oil than

we are told there is. If it's running out, why don't the oil companies protect their investments better than this? There's no recovering what is leaking and spilling. I don't get it.........

[Purveyor]

9. Indeed! Thursday we were told that there was 'no leak' yet this morning we learn that over 42,000

gallons a day is leaking...

Maybe it is just my TV viewing habits but I'm not seeing a lot of coverage regarding the 'spill' aspect of this dire situation.

[pitohui]

24. well there's quite a lot of oil in the gulf of mexico

the easy oil was drilled long ago but there's a lot of deepwater oil

as far as "why don't oil companies protect their investments?" trust me, NOBODY who worked there wanted or expected the rig to blow up

industrial accidents happen in EVERY industry, remember when all those men were burned alive last summer at the sugar refinery -- but we still need food

and we still need oil

[swilton]

6. It's more than just the marine and aquatic life

This is a sensitive area for migratory birds as well.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. So does this mean the BP officials lied?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:wow:

[tclambert]

12. Corporate PR people lie? Of course not! They all swear by the ethics of their profession to . . .

I'm sorry, I couldn't finish that sentence. My fingers began to burn uncontrollably.

[BrklynLiberal]

8. None of this information was enough to stop this oil rig from being allowed where it is???????????

The slick is at present 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, potentially threatening fragile coastal wetlands, fisheries, shrimp nurseries and other marine life such as sea turtles.

The area where the Deepwater Horizon previously stood is also a feeding ground for a pod of sperm whales, an endangered species, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revealed.

[jus_the_facts]

11. Seems it's being allowed to happen....so they won't have to worry about any of that in the future.

The Gulf will be completely dead except for drillin' oil...and hurricanes.

[pitohui]

25. drilling oil offshore louisiana is an important industry and most people want it there

louisiana has historically been an important source of oil & gas for the entire united states, i don't think anyone who drives a car or heats their home can really crap on us too bad for wanting to fill this need

i'm not sure what you expect us to do, for the most part, the oil industry lives v. harmoniously with the gulf of mexico, what's killing the gulf of mexico is all the fertilizer coming down the mississippi river and creating these dead zones that get bigger and bigger every summer

this oil spill at the height of spring breeding season is upsetting and distressing but we are no more going to say, hey, let's stop drilling for badly needed oil in the gulf than we're going to say, hey, let's stop growing corn in the midwest!!!

if you come down here and stop everybody in the street and ask them if they want us to continue oil drilling in the gulf, i promise you, almost everyone is going to say "yes, it's important work that needs to be done" and it's important to our state/national economy

we are not a rich state like florida or california that can just say, oh well, we don't need the work, leave the oil under the ocean!

i don't think the men who died in the accident would want their legacy to be a bunch of people claiming that their work was not even worth the doing...

[truthisfreedom]

10. Drill, baby, drill.

Sarah, you're a never-ending source of inspiration for Mother Nature.

[Oregone]

13. We can fix this with more offshore drilling

Well, at least its not mid-east oil in that water!

:rofl:

[jannyk]

14. BBC has it at 580sq miles already

There are fears of an environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, as efforts to clear up an oil spill have been suspended because of bad weather. A drilling rig leased by the oil company BP exploded and sank off Louisiana coast last Thursday. Some 1,000 barrels of oil a day are now leaking into the sea from the damaged well, officials say.
They say the oil leak has the potential to damage beaches, barrier islands and wetlands across the coastline.

Bad weather caused cleanup efforts to be suspended over the weekend, allowing the slick to grow to about 580 sq miles (1,500 sq km), officials say.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8642518.stm

[bread_and_roses]

15. but but but...were not people here defending offshore drilling just the other day?

and pointing out how innocuous this spill was? presumably because Obama is protecting his future campaign contributions from BP et al now, since I seem to remember just about if not everyone being opposed to offshore drilling just a little while ago - like during the campaign?

let's see - whales and the entire marine eco-system vs. BP campaign $$$? No contest. Bye bye ecosystem.

[pitohui]

26. people in louisiana are not opposed to offshore drilling, they're in favor of it

decade after decade, people in louisiana have been supportive of this industry, an important one for our state

as for whales? i will admit i've never seen a whale in the gulf of mexico, not to question the london times or whoever but "important" eco-system for whales, i'm on the doubting side of that, to be frankly

[CLANG]

17. This will end up much worse than the Valdez

and it looks like I won't be vacationing in the gulf for quite a few years...

[Judi Lynn]

18. Gulf Oil Slick: Visible From Space

Gulf Oil Slick: Visible From Space
April 27, 2010 7:33 AM

Four hundred miles out in space, NASA's Aqua satellite has taken pictures of the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. In this image from Sunday, the center of it is about even with the mouth of the Mississippi River. We're told it covers 400 square miles. Take a look.

(Photo)

The Coast Guard says 42,000 gallons of oil are leaking from the well into the gulf daily (forgive me for omitting the word earlier). By oil-spill standards, it is big but not record-setting; the Exxon Valdez, 21 years ago, spilled close to 11 million gallons into much colder waters. The Gulf of Mexico has the advantage of being warm; a fair amount of oil will likely evaporate before it can reach the Louisiana coast.

If you know Louisiana geography (if not, there's a Google map HERE) you'll be able to pick out New Orleans in the upper left, and, just to the north of it, Lake Pontchartrain. The lake is about 40 miles across from east to west. The oil slick would probably fill it.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2010/04/gulf-oil-slick-visible-from-space.html

[Judi Lynn]

19. Oil spill growing in Gulf of Mexico off US coast

Oil spill growing in Gulf of Mexico off US coast
KEVIN McGILL
The Associated Press

Published: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 12:19 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 12:19 p.m.

NEW ORLEANS — The Coast Guard said Tuesday that a sheen of oil that's been covering an area in the Gulf of Mexico since an oil rig exploded off the Louisiana coast is growing.


Eleven people have been missing and presumed dead since the rig exploded and sank last week about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the southern state's coast.

As of Tuesday morning, oil that leaked from the rig site was spread over an area about 48 miles (77 kilometers) long and 80 miles (129 kilometers) wide at its widest. The borders of the spill were uneven, making it difficult to calculate how many square miles are covered, Coast Guard Petty Officer Erik Swanson said.

"Right now, the weather's in our favor," Swanson said, explaining that the wind was blowing the oil away from shore Tuesday.

But Swanson said the winds could shift later in the week and there was concern about oil reaching the shore.

So far, skimming vessels had collected more than 48,000 gallons (182,000 liters) of oily water, Swanson said.

More:
http://www.goupstate.com/article/20100427/ARTICLES/100429730/1083/ARTICLES?Title=Oil-spill-growing-in-Gulf-of-Mexico-off-US-coast-

[pitohui]

23. this is truly a tragedy

i heard that the 11 men had been found on some kind of escape raft, it turned out to be one of those rumors, a very cruel rumor for the families involved...

a true disaster from start to finish, i hope they can "cap" this well soon

v. worried abt the bird breeding season on the barrier islands

in the other thread, some folks in florida said they could smell the petroleum, here in new orleans i cannot, i guess it's going to the east of us???