The truth about oil contamination in the gulf
Here’s a quick overview of how bad the oil contamination really is:
Here’s a quick overview of how bad the oil contamination really is:
One of the interesting things about the mainstream media is how it is used to prepare the public awareness.
For example in this latest article on the Gulf Oil Disaster from Nola.com there is this telling revelation from Admiral Thad Allen.
“Work must continue to better understand the lower-than-expected pressure readings,” he said. “This work centers on two plausible scenarios, depletion of oil from the reservoir and potential leakage caused by damage to the well bore or casing.
“While we are pleased that no oil is currently being released into the Gulf of Mexico and want to take all appropriate action to keep it that way, it is important that all decisions are driven by the science,” he said. “Ultimately, we must ensure no irreversible damage is done which could cause uncontrolled leakage from numerous points on the sea floor.”
Effectively he is saying that in the past they didn’t understand the pressure readings. He explains why in the following statement by saying that “it is important that all decisions are driven by science”. This is because in the past decisions leading up to the disaster were not driven by scientific understanding. In fact almost everyone who had any idea of the kind of damage they were going to cause by proceeding with this failure of a business plan was blacklisted, killed or otherwise removed from the consultation process leaving only people who were not qualified to understand what they were being asked to do or people who were happy to say yes in order to keep their jobs or even to not put their lives at risk.
It is also telling that they are claiming there is no longer oil coming out of the ground. It has been well documented that there are large numbers of fissures in the seabed above the upto 50km in diameter oil field. For them to claim that simply closing off a 10 inch pipe is the solution to the problem of the oil coming out of the ground is an outright lie. What they are really doing is preparing everyone for the possibility that oil is actually quietly rising out of the ground “from numerous points on the sea floor” throughout the area. The entire zone is upto 400km in diameter depending on the faults and the cracks that are getting worse every day due to the pressure making it’s way up from the Methane Hydrate deposits under the oil field which they have tried to use without understanding the risks involved or without caring for the risks. Which of those two is the real truth is being vociferously debated all over the world. Some say it is just shear incompetence and others say it is part of a bigger plan to kill off large numbers of the worlds population. The latter seems a rather ineffective way of population control, effectively destroying the Atlantic fish supply and causing massive amounts of human and ecological carnage but it is entirely within the realms of possibility.
We can’t avert the biggest ecological disaster that has ever happened but it is possible to stop it from getting worse by fixing it at the source.
Due to the shear volume of Methane Hydrate that is being forced to the surface since the idiots working on the Horizon Oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico dug into it causing it to explode in a misguided attempt to encourage the oil above it out of the ground without having to use more energy that it could provide in the process of getting it out and allowing them to make a substantial profit from the vast amounts of oil that they were attempting to collect we are seeing a gradual collapse of the Gulf seabed and the likelihood of a massive volcanic eruption causing high loss of life along the gulf coast is now very high.
The only real solution to avert further environmental damage is to nuke the area and fuse the earths crust and all the cracks, faults and fissures that have been created by the pressure of the Methane Hydrate being forced to the surface. There is a lot of talk of it on the net but not much understanding of what really needs to happen. In essence the confusing reports are confusing the situation further and giving support to the idea that things should be handled slowly in case the massive amounts of oil stored below the gulf are completely destroyed.
Here’s a breakdown of what needs to be done.
1: The size of the oil field that is being forced to the surface needs to be determined. Independant experts estimate it to be approx 40 – 50 km in diameter. This will allow nuclear experts to create the right size payload to cover the entire area.
2: Multiple wells need to be drilled into the earth positioned a reasonable distance from the oil field taking into consideration the existing fault lines and new cracks that have been created in the intermediate layers above the oil field to allow the nukes to be positioned in such a way as to fuse a layer of the earth covering the entire field after they are exploded.
The scale of the damage done in the gulf of Mexico disaster is unprecedented. Here’s an overview of what has gone wrong deep underground.
Firstly there are many independently documented and recorded oil fissures erupting in other locations away from the well head. The entire affected area is in vicinity of 400 square kilometers. The measurements that are being made on the pressure inside the well are redundant as the actual pressure is being dissipated across a much larger area.
With the Methane Hydrate feeding into the rock layers, cracks open and pressure makes it’s way to the surface, with more pressure building up in the intermediate rock layers there are a couple of possibilities for the pressure to be released.
1: Cracks develop spewing pressure and oil to equalize the area
2: A massive volcanic explosion
In much the same way that a bridge will collapse or an avalanche will build until it is out of control this is what is happening now in the Gulf. The pressure exterting outwards and will eventually find relief upwards. The odds are high it will blow like a volcano.
Seismic data for the area contains all the latest info on p waves and s waves however it is not being publicly released for independent analysis. This data provides everything we need to solve for the modulus of elasticity to enable us to calculate how strong the pressure is.
The questions we should be asking are:
Where is the geophysical data for independant analysis?
How bad is it really?
This data should be public record as it will require a massive evacuation of the area before it blows.
Independant experts have declared the so called BOP is actually just a methanol injector and not a Blow Out Preventor as the press is reporting.
Here’s why:
A Blow Out Preventor stops the drill stem from blowing out of the ground. Conversely a valve is used to control fluid flow just like a faucet.
Clearly something that sits ontop of the pipe and uses the pipe for support is not going to stop the pipe from coming out of the ground or seal the pipe at the kind of pressure that would cause it to blow out in the first place.
The top of the bore hole is very big as the wells are very deep, and the piping is stacked on top of each other, pieces on top of pieces.. The top of the well is approx 1-2m in diameter down to 2/300m in depth until hard consolidated rock is reached.
According to the old rules (that were dismissed as unnecessary by BP management for the Macondo well) the first BOP was located near to the cosolidated rock 2/300m under ground with several hundred meters of concrete on top so they won’t move anywhere.
The BOP at the ocean floor should be automatically triggered if the pipeline starts to move upwards for any reason. It is effectively a huge huge slab of steel approximately the size of a house. It sits on top of the well head and when triggered clamps onto the pipe and closes the hole. The reason for this is If the pipe blows out it whips around like a firehose and the steel pipe will take out pretty much anything in its way.
The cap seems to be working in as far as it has stopped the volcano from coming out of the ocean floor. What they have not done though is stop the Methane Hydrate from filling up the layers of limestone where the oil was previously stored under the earths crust. The answer to the real issue depends on how much Methane Hydrate is left in the deposit below the oil field that was used to supercharge the oil out of the field and up into the water. The issue of the well walls holding is a red herring. The longer the pressure deep underground is allowed to build up means the more damage that will be done to the underlying hard layers containing the field and the potential for earthquakes and volcanic activity is greatly increased.
In the best case scenario they have tapped out the Methane Hydrate reserve and allowed it enough space in the underground layers to disperse evenly which over time will eventually find it’s way to the surface. It is much more likely that the pressure consistency being observed is due to the remaining Methane Hydrate is in fact just spreading out further into the oil field and at some point the pressure on the containing rock structure will become too great. This will cause it to breakdown and allow the Methane gas to disperse and attempt to find another way out of the ground. In fact it has most likely already happened as the hole which the oil is coming out of is not big enough to allow all the pressure to escape and relieve the pressure on the oil fields outer walls due to the technical incompetence of the people involved in setting up the disaster in the first place.
Watch for increased seismic activity due to Methane Hydrate gas dispersal deep underground.
If they have actually tapped out the Methane Hydrate reserve and the pressure that is contained by the cap is the limit of what there is left to deal with then the cap could be left on permanently and/or the remaining oil could be siphoned at a later date. However in that situation there is still the problem of a very large hole under the oil field where the Methane Hydrate deposit used to be stored.
In reality it is a combination of all the above that is now taking place and they are trying to play down the issue of having to deal with a much bigger problem at a later date when the pressure keeping the Methane Hydrate field intact is dispersed and it collapses under what remains of the oil field and the external pressure from all sides.
No matter what way you look at it this is criminal negligence of the highest order. In China they execute people for much less. What is America and Britain going to do?
There are a couple of labs being funded to work on the possibility of using sunlight to transform water and CO2 into a combustible fuel with equivalent stored energy to existing carbon based fuel. An article in the daily telegraph attempts to portray it as a serious potential option for ensuring future energy demands are met. What they don’t tell us is the math behind the technology. It does sound like a viable solution and with the labs working on the problem maybe they will solve the issues holding it back before we actually run out of oil and our real problems really start. The main question is if they can extract enough CO2 from the surrounding environment to get back the potential energy that will make it an equivalent in energy storage to existing fuels. It’s definitely possible to make combustible fuel with this technique but will it really scale to meet the requirements that we have for the global energy supply over the coming 10 years let alone the following decade once the existing fuel supply we can extract energy positively has been exhausted?
Solar-powered reactors can take carbon dioxide and turn it into carbon monoxide. The same reactors can also be used to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The two can then be reacted together with a catalyst to form hydrocarbon fuels, in a technique known as the Fischer-Tropsch process.
Fuels made in this way are sufficiently similar to those currently used in cars that major redesigns of engines and refuelling stations should not be necessary. If fuels can be made entirely from atmospheric carbon, running a car on that fuel would be carbon neutral.
One such machine, the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5), created by a team of scientists at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, captures carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust fumes. In the future, however, they hope to extract it directly from the air.The system uses a giant parabolic mirror, which concentrates sunlight on to two chambers separated by spinning rings of cerium oxide. As the rings turn, the cerium oxide is heated to 1500C and releases oxygen into one of the chambers. The oxygen is then pumped away.
As the ring spins, the now de-oxidised cerium moves into the other chamber. Carbon dioxide is pumped in, and the deoxidised cerium steals one of the oxygen molecules, creating carbon monoxide and cerium oxide.Another team, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, uses a similar system, but with calcium oxide, zinc oxide and steam, which can create a stream of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Their system can already use atmospheric carbon dioxide.
At the moment the two reactors have problems. The New Mexico team’s system currently only works for a few seconds at a time, while the Swiss model runs at a mere 10 kilowatts. But both hope to improve reliability and yield.
The data being presented on the actual size of the oil “spill” varies between different sites. Clearly there is a game being played to minimise or misrepresent the real size of the disaster. What purpose does it serve to disseminate misleading information about the actual physical size of the disaster?
ERMA – interactive map of the disaster area
NOAA – updated daily
USGS – environmental monitoring for Gulf Oil Disaster
Florida Disaster . org
ESRI – timeline and projected forecast
If it was my home – Comparison to size of major population centers – June 14
In addition there is an immeasurably large amount of Methane gas in the ocean which is colorless and odorless and creates dead zones which cannot be traced from satellite imagery. After two weeks of containment efforts starting from June 7, BP’s non independently verified official figures were stated as “burning about 30 million cubic feet of natural gas daily from the source of the leak”. That adds up “about” 450 million cubic feet in 15 days. That’s enough gas to heat about 450,000 homes for four days.
The oil volcano erupted on April 25 and the first signs off at least partially effective siphoning of the oil flow started on the 7 June. That means there were 44 days of complete freeflow of toxic pollutants including Methane Hydrate gas and the highly toxic benzene along with the oil erupting out of the underwater volcano. If we use BP’s figures as an indicator of the real amount there is at least 1.3 billion cubic feet of methane gas distributed in the gulf which is untraceable by satellite imagery and completely toxic to nearly all forms of sea life.
The Gulf measures approximately 1,600 kilometers from east to west, 900 kilometers from north to south, and has a surface area of 1.5 million square kilometers. That is equivalent to 4,995 billion square feet (1,500,000×1000x3.33=4,995,000,000,000). The average depth of the Gulf of Mexico is 1615 meters or 5383 feet with maximum depths ranging from 3,750 m to 4,384 m. There is enough Methane gas to create a deadzone 1 foot deep spanning approx 400,000 square kilometers (1000mx3.33=3330cf), (1300000000cf/3330cf=390390sq/km). That’s a deadzone a foot deep and a kilometer wide stretching up or across for upto 400,000km! The circumference of the earth is only 40,075.16 km. So far there is enough Methane released to create a deadzone at least 1 kilometer wide and a foot deep that can go around the world 10 times. At a meter deep it will only make it round 3 times. The scale gets more comprehensible when we look at larger depths.
At 10m deep the area is 40,000 sq/km. At 100m deep it is 4000 sq/km in length. We are looking at a deadzone 1km square and 100 meters deep that can stretch from New York City to Los Angeles – 3935.55km. At 1000m deep it is 40 square kilometers in length. That means a potential deadzone 1 kilometer deep and 40 kilometers wide.That’s a long way to swim when you can’t breath! If you were unlucky enough to swim into it from any direction it would be almost impossible to swim out of it once you realized you couldn’t breath.
Things get even worse when the toxicity of Methane Hydrate in ppm is considered. Scientific studies concluded that 70% methane to oxygen levels is enough to kill mice after 18 hours of exposure. Not to mention the explosive nature of Methane when is is mixed with air. A 5% methane:air ratio is enough to allow burning. When ignited by plasma lightning bolts and travelling at wind speeds of more than 100miles per hour things start to get pretty hairy. The air can literally catch on fire! Hurricane Alex is just the first hurricane of the 2010 season. In addition the chemical reactions that take place when Methane Hydrate in very large quantities is exposed to the environment are not fully understood. Another issue is methane consuming algal blooms which also consume the surrounding oxygen depleting the oxygen content in the water and increasing the methane:oxygen ratio. Add to that the vast amounts of highly toxic chemical pollutants that have been pumped into the oil stream in an attempt to disperse and breakdown the oil, and the other highly toxic naturally occurring chemicals such as Benzene (deadly to humans and animals in as little as 1000 ppm) that are streaming out of the rupture, and the massively increased Carbon monoxide production in the area from burning off 30mil cf of methane every day since June 7, plus the pollution from the “controlled” surface burnofss and we can start to see a more complete overview of the scale and unprecedented damage of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico Ecological Disaster.
What the real figures are we will probably never know. Suffice to say that as BP have been attempting to down play the size of the disaster since the eruption began with misleading data on the volume of the flow it is reasonable to conclude the actual amount of pollutants flowing from the undersea Methane Hydrate/Oil volcano is far greater than they are prepared to divulge. Even with the “strategically” minimized numbers they have presented as “facts” we are seeing the worst man made ecological disaster in the history of Humanity which will have an unfathomable negative impact on the entire world for many years to come.
BENZENE
Health Concerns in connection with Benzene
a) Benzene is present in varying concentrations in some crude oils and the MSDS shall be consulted each time before cargo handling.
b) Benzene gas has poor warning qualities, as its odour threshold is well above the TLV-TWA limits. Exposure to concentrations in excess of 1000 ppm can lead to unconsciousness and death. Benzene can also be absorbed through the skin and becomes toxic when ingested.
c) If there is evidence that dissolved benzene is present in the liquid cargo in quantities of 0.5% by volume or more, respiratory protection is required when conducting tank de-mucking or standing up wind from tanks containing benzene are being vented;
TLV (Threshold Limit Value) TWA (Time Weighted Average)
The airborne concentration of a Toxic substance averaged over an 8 hours Period, usually expressed in parts per million (ppm)
TLV – STEL (Short Term Exposure Limit)
The airborne concentration of a Toxic substance averaged over any 15 minute period, usually expressed in parts per million (ppm)
Gas IACS RECOMMENDATION Limit 8 Hour work shift (ppm) (STEL) Limit 15 min working (ppm) Benzene (C6H6) 1 5 Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) 5 20 Carbon Dioxide (CO2) 5 30 Carbon Monoxide (CO) 25 50 Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) 1 3 Nitrogen Monoxide (NO) 25 50 Sulphur Dioxide (SO2) 2 5
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