Documents: BP Estimated 4.2M Gallon in Worst Case
Sunday, 20 Jun 2010 05:53 PM
BURAS, Louisiana – BP Plc estimates that a worst-case scenario rate for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could be about 100,000 barrels of oil per day, according to an internal company document released Sunday by a senior U.S. congressional Democrat.
Its estimate of up to 100,000 barrels (4.2 million gallons/15.9 million liters) of oil per day is far higher than the current U.S. government estimate of up to 60,000 barrels (2.5 million gallons/9.5 million liters) gushing daily from the ruptured offshore well into the sea.
BP spokesman Toby Odone said the document appeared to be genuine but the estimate applied only to a situation in which a key piece of equipment called a blowout preventer is removed. "Since there are no plans to remove the blowout preventer, the number is irrelevant," he said.
The British energy giant, still struggling to stop a leak that began on April 20 and is causing an economic and environmental disaster along the U.S. Gulf Coast, is planning to raise $50 billion to cover the cost of the largest oil spill in U.S. history, London's Sunday Times reported.............."
Gulf Oil Spill More Than 10X Greater Than Thought: Experts
by leavingwt 37 Replies latest social current
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freydo
Eastern Pacific Atlantic ZCZC MIATWOAT ALL
TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMM
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
800 PM EDT THU JUN 24 2010
FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO...
1. SURFACE OBSERVATIONS AND SATELLITE IMAGES INDICATE THAT THE BROAD
AREA OF LOW PRESSURE CENTERED BETWEEN THE EASTERN TIP OF HONDURAS
AND JAMAICA HAS BECOME BETTER DEFINED THIS EVENING. SURFACE
PRESSURES HAVE BEEN FALLING IN THE AREA AND THERE HAS BEEN AN
INCREASE IN THE SHOWER ACTIVITY. UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE GRADUALLY
BECOMING MORE CONDUCIVE FOR DEVELOPMENT AND THE SYSTEM COULD BECOME
A TROPICAL DEPRESSION BEFORE IT REACHES THE YUCATAN PENINSULA IN A
COUPLE OF DAYS. THERE IS A HIGH CHANCE...60 PERCENT...OF THISSYSTEM BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.
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TROPICAL STORM ALEX DISCUSSION NUMBER 3
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL012010
500 AM EDT SAT JUN 26 2010
AN AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER INVESTIGATING TROPICAL
DEPRESSION ONE REPORTED 925 MB FLIGHT-LEVEL WINDS OF 46 KT ABOUT 90
NM EAST OF THE CENTER...WHICH SUGGEST SURFACE WINDS OF NEAR 35 KT.
THE STEPPED FREQUENCY MICROWAVE RADIOMETER ON THE AIRCRAFT SHOWED A
LARGE AREA OF WINDS NEAR 35 KT THAT DID NOT APPEAR TO BE RAIN-
CONTAMINATED. BASED ON THIS...THE DEPRESSION IS UPGRADED TO
TROPICAL STORM ALEX WITH AN INITIAL INTENSITY OF 35 KT. THE
AIRCRAFT DATA SUGGESTS THAT THE CIRCULATION OF ALEX REMAINS
BROAD...AND THAT THE RECENTLY REPORTED CENTRAL PRESSURE OF 1004 MB
MAY HAVE BEEN MEASURED IN A MESOSCALE LOW PRESSURE AREA. IT SHOULD
BE NOTED THAT THE AIRCRAFT REPORTED SFMR WINDS IN EXCESS OF 40 KT
WHICH APPEAR SUSPECT DUE TO RAIN CONTAMINATION.
THE INITIAL MOTION REMAINS UNCERTAIN...WITH THE BEST ESTIMATE OF
285/7. FOR THE NEXT 24 TO 48 HOURS ALEX IS EXPECTED TO MOVE
WEST-NORTHWESTWARD OR NORTHWESTWARD TO THE SOUTH OF A LOW/MID-LEVEL
RIDGE CENTERED OVER THE EASTERN UNITED STATES. AFTER THAT...THE
LARGE-SCALE MODELS FORECAST THE RIDGE TO WEAKEN AS A DEEP-LAYER
TROUGH MOVES INTO THE EASTERN U. S. THERE REMAINS A SIGNIFICANT
SPREAD IN THE MODEL GUIDANCE ON HOW THIS EVOLUTION WILL AFFECT
ALEX. THE GFS...GFS ENSEMBLE MEAN...AND THE GFDL SHOW ENOUGH OF A
BREAK IN THE RIDGE TO STEER ALEX NORTHWARD TOWARD THE NORTHWESTERN
GULF COAST. ............. -
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Storm could spell more bad news for BP
updated 6/27/2010 12:17:11 AM ET
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37921094/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/
AP story reports that Shell was evacuating personnel from their Gulf rigs in U.S.-regulated areas on Saturday as gale force winds would also shut down any containment efforts by BP for at least two weeks.
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BP Oil Spill Breaks Record for Biggest in Gulf
(July 1) -- America's worst-ever oil spill is now the Gulf of Mexico's most devastating in history as well.
"Oil gushing from the BP well following the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion April 20 that killed 11 workers has surpassed the record Ixtoc I spill in Mexican waters from 1979 to 1980, The Associated Press reports. The AP said the oil flowing into gulf waters hit 140.6 million gallons today, compared with 140 million for the Ixtoc spill........" -
freydo
"A new computer model shows oil from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill has less than a 1 percent chance of hitting shores in Southwest Florida. That’s welcome news for tourism-dependent Lee County. But the same is not true for Florida’s east coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released the forecast Friday, reported a 61 to 80 percent chance of sheen, tar balls or other oil remnants coming within 20 miles from the Keys north to the Fort Lauderdale area around Aug. 18. Predictions varied somewhat in recent weeks as the Loop Current, an undersea conveyer belt that carries the warm Gulf water through the Straits of Florida, shifted. The current is about 200 miles west of Southwest Florida."
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Overreaction: The real damage from the BP oil spill
FORTUNE -- "If you're searching for yet another reason to hate BP and distrust Washington, here it is. No, I'm not talking about the dead birds, befouled beaches, or zillions in damages inflicted on millions of Americans by the incompetents at BP (enabled by clueless federal regulators). Rather, I'm talking about the way our nation will overreact to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. That overreaction will cause us far greater damage than the disaster itself will, because we'll import more oil than we otherwise would and produce less of our own.
Our country's economic clout is already diminishing because we're importing huge amounts of capital to cover our budget and trade deficits, while exporting huge numbers of production jobs to the rest of the world. The last thing we need: increasing oil imports and becoming even more vulnerable to pricing and political pressures from oil-producing countries that aren't exactly friends of Western democratic principles -- while watching money gush out of our country to oil exporters even faster than oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah, I may sound a little over the top. But as someone who used to write about regulated utilities for a living, I can't help but remember the damage we did to ourselves as a nation because of the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear generating plant near Harrisburg, Pa., in 1979. It was a terrifying incident, but it turned out that there was only minimal damage to the environment and probably none to the local citizenry -- other than scaring them half to death.
The only economic damage of consequence was to the plant's owner, General Public Utilities. But there was huge collateral damage to our country. The environmental and regulatory fallout (pun intended) from TMI led us to shun new nuclear plants for almost 30 years. Although some of the nukes under construction at the time were completed, it wasn't until 2007 -- that's 28 years after the incident -- that we got our first post-TMI application to build a new one. Meanwhile, we grew increasingly dependent on coal, oil, and natural gas to generate electricity. We now see that carbon dioxide-spewing coal plants weren't such a great idea, and that using oil and gas rather than gradually growing nuclear wasn't very smart either. But Three Mile Island trauma left us a generation behind the rest of the industrial world at building and running nukes.................."http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/22/news/companies/oil_spill_reaction.fortune/index.htm
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designs
Energy from Nuclear Reactors may not be to bad a source, more work needs to be done on the after-product that stays lethal for 50,000 years.
