We are now Gods

[Denis]

It's amateur hour indeed. Now BP is saying that it will be a few days or a week before they can topfill the leaks with, get this, golf balls, rope and mud. WTF?! I mean, WTF do they spend all their money on? Sure doesn't seem like they spend much on fallback measures.

Funny you mention explosives that Uwe, because one of the ways of stopping a fire in an oilfield is to use explosives.

Isn't it odd that most of the world's man-made environmental disasters involve energy?

[Lightyear]

............
It disgusts me.


I've contacted someone about switching my truck over to biodiesel full time.

That's admirable Denis but what will you do in the winter when the Biodiesel gels up?  I've always considered the bio angle to zero sum gain, that just makes you feel good, because it takes carbon based energy to produce - energy to convert and process and fertilizer to grow it.  The folks that covert left over cooking oil have it down - the oil has served it's original purpose and uses little energy to be converted.  The drawbacks are space to run your home converter and your car smells like french fries when you drive.

As for why we are drilling at the depth of mile?  As the feds!  We have TONS of oil and natural gas in very shallow waters but we can not get to it!  Ask California!  Ask Florida!  Hey, we want to gas up our Hummers and live in 10,000 sqare foot, air conditioned, houses but you can't drill here!  In short they are drilling a mile in depth beacause that is the only place they are allowed to drill.

The oil patch/energy sector has been my customer for almost 30 years now and I've had many discussions with engineers, geologists and the like to know that there are two sides to this story.

[Lightyear]

..................
Funny you mention explosives that Uwe, because one of the ways of stopping a fire in an oilfield is to use explosives..........

The explosion concept robs the well fire of oxygen. 

[uwe]

I know, but wouldn't it also cave in any channel/drill hole to the oil?

[Lightyear]

I'm not an engineer but I think that the pressure involved, forcing the oil to through the damaged drill pipe - almost a mile below sea level, is huge and that it would take many tons of earth to contain it.  What if the explosion just opened it up more?

Funny enough the earth seeps oil into Gulf naturally - anyone who has ever been to the beach in Galveston has run afoul of the dreaded "tarballs"

[Highlander]

I'm not slinging tar-balls here, but here are some interesting stats, and we all know what those are (lies, damned lies, etc)

BP being called British is interesting... 40% is British owned; 39% is US owned... unless their website has got that wrong too...

Of the 21% of those shares that are owned by "individuals" 7% is UK; 14% is US...

http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9010453&contentId=7019612

Of the top six users of oil in the world, positions 2 thru 6 nearly equate to US usage, which is approximately 20% of the total planet useage, of which they are only able to produce slightly less than half that figure...

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/index.cfm?view=consumption

I don't think there is enought farmland in the world to grow that much material for all the required vehicles/generators/heating in use today, let alone the present, unsustainable, human population growth rate...

Why do governments allow such exploration as this Gulf BP site, or others like IXOTOC 1...? for fun...? sorry guys, but regardless of how it turns out, you have the most to lose by it going ahead/not going ahead...

Soap box now being shreded for fuel...

[Dave W]

BP was British, the merger with Amoco and later Arco changed all that.

[Denis]

That's admirable Denis but what will you do in the winter when the Biodiesel gels up?  I've always considered the bio angle to zero sum gain, that just makes you feel good, because it takes carbon based energy to produce - energy to convert and process and fertilizer to grow it.  The folks that covert left over cooking oil have it down - the oil has served it's original purpose and uses little energy to be converted.  The drawbacks are space to run your home converter and your car smells like french fries when you drive.

As for why we are drilling at the depth of mile?  As the feds!  We have TONS of oil and natural gas in very shallow waters but we can not get to it!  Ask California!  Ask Florida!  Hey, we want to gas up our Hummers and live in 10,000 sqare foot, air conditioned, houses but you can't drill here!  In short they are drilling a mile in depth beacause that is the only place they are allowed to drill.

The oil patch/energy sector has been my customer for almost 30 years now and I've had many discussions with engineers, geologists and the like to know that there are two sides to this story.

Here in North Carolina we don't have that much of a problem with the gelling of fuels and there are several different types of biodiesel: B5, B10, B20 (all mixtures of bio and petroleum based), B100 and then there are the kinds where used oil is collected, heated and strained. The latter one usually required the addition of a tank in the vehicle which contains a heater and is connected to the fuel pumps in conjunction with the regular tank. The vehicle is started with regular diesel, then when the engine is warm a switch is thrown changing over to the biodiesel. Once warm the vehicle can be started directly from the tank of bio.
The other kind of 100% biodiesel (and the one which retailers and wholesalers usually offer) has been strained, filter and has an added chemical to keep the fuel from gelling and this type is much more fluid at lower temps. I've run all of these except the one requiring an extra tank, but I'm considering trying it out.

[Lightyear]

Learn something every day!  But is it truly a seperation from oil?  Meaing how much oil used to process the corn, soybean, or other ag product that provides the bio stuff?  If it's truly an improvement I'm all for it.  I still like the recycled fryer oil

Anyone here in the bread basket?  Remember a few years back when congress mandated that a percentage of ethanol be added to gasoline?  The price of corn went apeshi* which caused  big ripple in the price of everything that depended on corn for a feedstock - beef for one.  It also caused mass chaos in Mexico where corn is a staple.

I'm all for lessing our addiction to oil but it seems that most folks don't comprehend just how our existance is tied to oil and Kenny's right - we have much to lose. 

[Denis]

I should have perhaps clarified something, now that I've read your reply. Yes, you can make biodiesel from corn, rapeseed oil (this is big in Europe), soybeans, etc, but the 100% biodiesel I've bought from independent was made exclusively from used oil collected from restaurants in the area. And sure, there is some energy used in the purification process but since that's used primarily for purifying the oil rather than MAKING it, it's probably a tiny amount in comparison.

If I went the route of adding an additional tank to the truck, collecting and filtering the oil while it's in that tank, the energy used is almost nothing.

That whole push in the US for ethanol made from corn a few years ago was foolish and shortsighted because a) lots of that corn WOULD have been used for food, either for humans or animals in the US or shipped over seas for food and b) actually cost a little more to make than the benefits earned from using it.

When you realize, as I suddenly realized the other day, nearly all the world's man-made environmental disasters are energy oriented (Exxon Valdese, Amoco Cadiz, Chernobyl, etc, etc) it's pretty sobering.

[Highlander]

The UK is ideal for rapeseed growth, but the smell is really unpleasant when it pollenates...

Britain had the worlds first fast-breeder reactor - now decommisioned - but the clear-up is going to take decades...

[sniper]

  Maybe we should have strived for wisdom instead of power?

[Freuds_Cat]

The UK is ideal for rapeseed growth, but the smell is really unpleasant when it pollenates...

Britain had the worlds first fast-breeder reactor - now decommisioned - but the clear-up is going to take decades...

Irony being one of Australia's leading characteristics, we have the worlds largest reserves of uranium (24% of the worlds supply in my state alone) but only one small 20 megawatt reactor in Sydney which gets used for research, particularly neutron diffraction experiments, production of neutron transmutation doped silicon, and for production of medical and industrial radioisotopes.

The current state govt make a big deal out of being anti Nuke but are very pro mining the stuff to send overseas and have even tried to convince us that due to our large desert area we should be getting the spent fuel back from other coutries after the fact.

The pro Nuke lobby tell us we are mad not to be building Nuke plants because its such a clean cheap source of power.
We have a 1045mw wind farm network.
Hot rocks that have (as of last week) been determined 4 times hotter than expected.
5000kms of Great Southern ocean coastline (most of which is unpopulated) should wave power be required.
Huge uptake in solar panels on residential housing over the last 15 years (excess unused power getts fed back into the grid) and lots of sunshine to go with that.
And as a fossil backup we have huge reserves of Natural Gas which is one of the cleanest fossil fuels.

Its a huge argument here at the moment. The Nuke Lobby are pushing the Clean and Cheap line very hard.

My attitude is why would you want nuke waste if you dont have too. The other thing that annoys me is that they dont factor in the clean up and waste holding costs as part of the overall expense of the power.

As for BP in the Gulf  .......sigh 

[Highlander]

It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it...

(hmm... that might be a hook line...)

[Freuds_Cat]

and sinker