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Pandora’s Oil Well
Technical jargon conceals by confusion. The immense scale of the problem surrounding the sinking of the Transocean drilling rig, "Deepwater Horizon," requires that the public stay alert when confronted with slick lingo. So, I'd like to help readers understand from a geologist's viewpoint the sad absurdity of the Gulf of Mexico situation-one that is much more than yet another "oil spill."
In September 2009 BP announced their discovery of the "giant" Tiber oilfield and crowed that drilling a 35,055 foot deep well into the earth's crust under 4,132 feet of water made it one of the deepest wells ever achieved by their industry. Less than one year later, BP had to alert the public to an explosion and fire onboard the semisubmersible drilling rig-a "unit" floating above the seafloor that when flooded causes the contraption to submerge a desired depth and produce relative stability while drilling for oil and gas in rough waters. The rig was mining oil from the "Mississippi Canyon 252 well" that British Petroleum (BP) owns. And on Earth Day 2010, we learned that BP had "activated an extensive oil spill response" and was working with Transocean using remotely operated vehicles to assess the condition of the Tiber well and the "subsea blowout preventer."
A critical distinction here is between an oil spill and a blowout. I tried to look up the definition of "oil spill" in OilGasGlossary.com and found the following: "Sorry, but we can't found (sic) the definition of Oil Spill in our Oil Gas Glossary." I don't mean to be disingenuous. I really just wanted to have confirmed my instinct that the vernacular meaning of spill, to flow from a confined space, implies a finite amount of oil. In contrast, the Glossary told me that a blowout is an uncontrolled flow of oil, water, or gas from a well bored into the earth. It suggests to me a comparatively unlimited quantity of the black gold. When BP announced their discovery and termed it "giant" they meant to convey that the Tiber oilfield contained somewhere between four and six billion barrels of oil; this contrasts with a "huge" oilfield usually considered to contain 250 million barrels of the stuff. Regardless of whether it's giant or huge, this Gulf of Mexico event is more than a spill.
What we have beneath the Gulf of Mexico is a gusher, folks. Only unlike 1859 when drillers greeted gushers with celebratory hoots, in 2010 BP confronts the Mississippi Canyon blowout with a relief well-that's another well drilled near and into the well that is out of control. BP doesn't use the phrase but drillers call the continuously spewing wells, "wild wells." Forgive me, but it's hard to feel reassured by the company's assertion that they've begun to remedy the subsurface problem-oil escaping with great force from inside the earth to the planet's watery surface-in this manner.
I'm reminded of the Centralia, Pennsylvania underground coal seam fire that has been burning since 1962. Like other coal seam fires, it may continue to burn underground for decades or even centuries until the fuel source is exhausted. So too the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), banned by the U.S. Congress in 1979 yet still leaking into the Hudson River three decades later from fractures in rock beneath the General Electric facilities at Hudson Falls and Fort Edward, New York where the company utilized PCBs in the manufacture of capacitors.
The time and space scales of the earth dwarf those of us mere humans, yet we tinker with the Earth's resources, manipulate them for our purposes, and underplay the risks we take. We scramble at the surface of the Earth to curtail the disastrous upshots of our inane technological "achievements."
When Prometheus stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it to people living on Earth, he angered Zeus. The king of the Olympians exacted revenge on humans by ordering the creation from earth of Pandora who would be a vehicle for bringing misery to mortals. According to the myth Pandora's box (jar)-a present from the Gods-loosed upon earth all the sorrows and plagues then known to humanity. In 2010, we've opened Pandora's well-Mississippi Canyon 252-spewing oil, sowing suffering, and defying control.
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40 Comments so far
Show AllGreat piece, real science and the articulation of the alternative word many of us have been seeking instead of the innocuous term "spill". This is a BLOWOUT. This is a high pressure release from deep in the earth. It is self propelled and coming from a "giant" deposit of this highly valued resource which we humans fight wars over, yet here is going to destructive waste, thanks to the cleverness and hubris of these same humans.
Once again, knowledge untethered from wisdom, and driven by greed. What a frickin mess!
Well said, Joe!
Or even better yet when they use uber innocuous term "leak".
Thanks to the professor for calling a spade a spade!
America heres the oil you wanted
Actually, Zeus's revenge consisted of chaining Prometheus to a rock and having eagles eat his liver. When it was gone, it was regenerated, and the eagles started over again.
That seems to be a good metaphor for what should be done to BP and the the flacks in the Interior department who facilitate drilling without permits or safety measures.
Using the newly calculated oil flow rate of 70 000 bbl/day ( http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/14-2 ), and the upper end estimate of the size of this oil field (6 billion barrels), this beast has enough oil in it to *potentially* run for 234.67 *YEARS* if left uncapped.
Time for some light musical entertainment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2Da9ULeL9Q
Enjoy.
Not sure if this was published on Common Dreams last Sunday or not, but it should be. The Orwellian response to this crisis is a new high for the Obama Administration. Even though the Great Man of Change just got through lifting the moratorium and has apparently been granting permits left and right since he got in office, he has not even stopped granting permits since...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/09/oil-spill-ecological-review-environment
He's still celebrated by the so called left. I say give the Man another Peace Prize!
What's up wid dat?
On Bill Moyers final show, he had a guest who said that Zeus, when realizing that Prometheus had stolen fire, told Prometheus that fire (technology) would be nothing without two other important components: Reverence and Justice.
Where is Reverence when everything, including humans, are looked upon as commodities?
Where is Justice when there is no accountability?
We are seeing this played out writ large in the Gulf.
Sioux Rose
OLD PECULIAR: Great words. I would add that the real loss, or theft to the commons, is in that nothing is recognized as sacred any longer. Life has been made so cheap, the earth and its abundance, treasures that took eons to develop, are being tossed by the moneychangers inside the Wall St temple. It's interesting that Manhattan was originally traded for $15 in wampum, and now, the merchants of greed residing there have devised an equally vapid figment of wealth: the swap/derivative. How many more ecosystems will be sacrificed to satisfy those who have hypnotized world leaders with their infinite reserves of make-believe wealth... as the sacred is traded for the transitory without care, understanding, or the remotest sign of sanity.
So true, Sioux Rose.
I'm beginning to think that humor may be the only remaining refuge for the 'sane'.
Sioux Rose
OP: It's one of my default survival mechanisms. I tend to get very funny when I'm upset or in a scary predicament. I wonder if I could use humor on any would-be executioners the way the fated fellow challenged Death to a chess game in Ingmar Bergman's "Seventh Seal"?
Sioux Rose: Great film reference!
Sioux Rose
KAY: Thanks. I wonder if some from CD could not gather to do a documentary on what the massive loss of life in the Gulf means. The photo of the duck sitting in the muck makes me cry. How do we apologize to all the species now handed death certificates for their premature demise?
I think of the Star Trek film where a Probe requires the sound of a whale's song to NOT destroy the earth. Captain Kirk has to go back in time to when there still WERE whales in order to capture the last whale. Is this going to turn out to be prophecy?
One of my closest friends is a well-known photographer who resides in Florida. He has close-up photos of Florida bears and panthers, animals that are very rare and seldom seen. When he showed me some of the footage it seemed to me that many of these creatures were almost posing, recognizing on some visceral level that their days were numbered and that a visual record of their lives ought to be kept.
The biological legacy being expunged in the slow death moving across the Gulf is a mortal wound to all who live.
"The photo of the duck sitting in the muck makes me cry." -- Sioux Rose
Me, too!
I keep thinking back to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This current catastrophe is a blowout in comparison, with no end in sight.
As for a documentary -- I'm game, of course. I have worked on countless radio documentaries -- research, writing, editing, voice-over, etc. However, I haven't had the opportunity to work with images, although for a two or three years, I took photographs of jazz artists.
Let me know what you have in mind.
Sioux Rose
Can anyone speak to this: Oil is a probable lubricant to the tectonic plates. Of late, we've seen LOTS of quake activity. Given the surging loss of oil in the Gulf, a zone situated at about the midpoint between Baja, California (recent quake) and Haiti (recent quake)... could the displacement of millions of gallons of oil cause any slippage of tectonic plates? I wonder if there will be seimic reverberations from the loosing of this floodtide of black death? Any geologists in our CD midst to comment on this?
The Arabs refer to their oil reserves as a soft loan from Allah. Interesting how the karmic boomerang appears to be expressing: that for so much savagery set against the citizens of Iraq and now Afghanistan (largely over access to oil), it's being lost at breakspeed while killing everything in its path.
I remember viewing a documentary about a rare tribe of people living high in the mountains of Columbia, the Kogi. One of their members came out of hiding to let it be known to the world that "You must stop drilling the Mother." They explained that their tribe viewed itself as the keeper of the rains, and that there, at the top of an ancient jungle, the rains had already lessened and were threatening to stop. The Kogi understood that if the rains were aborted there, the entire crop and harvest cycles of the world would alter immeasurably.
I viewed this important film close to 10 years ago, and instead of the wisdom being heeded, the oil barrons seized the reins of government and began to govern as if OIL was all that mattered. Now the result is before our stunned eyes, and the full measure of its deadly release is yet to be fathomed.
Sioux, i've had similar thoughts recently.
It seems quite obvious that oil has a purpose within the body/system of Mother Earth and this hemorrhage is one of many. There are , without doubt, repercussions that are yet unknown to us, but how could it be otherwise?
What we are witnessing is only the most obvious.
Drilling deep into the ocean floor. Such abuse and.........we know the symbolism here.
Learning always happens. And when we don't learn, we learn about what happens when we don't learn. It's just that the results are a lot harder.
Great post Sioux. Glad you are still here.
"Learning always happens. And when we don't learn, we learn about what happens when we don't learn. It's just that the results are a lot harder." -- readytotransform
You make an excellent point!
Thanks Kay!
Being in the apocalypse is starting to get on my nerves.....
rita
Believe me, it's getting on my nerves, too!
Watching, and feeling, all of this swirl around me makes me dizzy, and disoriented, to say the least!
A kindred spirit you are, Kay!
Sioux Rose
Count me in, you two... and now we three can become Commondreams' very own whirling dervishes. I have great costume ideas in mind!
SHEEPHERDER: I appreciate your response, but my instincts tell me all that displaced oil, even if it's not directly next to a specific fault line could cause displacements in plates at a distance for it's all ultimately connected. I mean if we consider Gaia, the earth as BODY, then "the knee bone's connected to the hip bone, the hip bone's connected to the..." You get the picture.
I am already wondering if I should put my place up for sale. I moved here for the springs... if our waters get contaminated, and the wild life starts dying... wow. I couldn't bear it. The ecological chain reactions are almost too mortifying to consider.
I was thinking about betrayal tonight. How much the leaders and captains of industry, bankers, insurance moguls... the whole of it is all about betrayal. And yet the psychology at play is to make US feel guilty for not earning enough, or doing enough when so many aspects of our lives, and quality of life, is being undermined. The value system is so off kilter. Nature is getting the brunt of too much of it.
Sioux Rose: I answered sheepherder above -- your post provoked some additional ideas to spawn in my brain.
Thanks!
Sioux, i want to see those costumes!
Yes, the geologist here (with no disrespect meant), sounds a bit too sure of what we do not know much about). Hubris leads us..........you know all too well.
Hah! I've never heard it put quite like that. "Being in the apocalypse..." Yes, I guess we are already in it.
A woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, indeed!!
Old Peculiar....I remember that film!
Sioux Rose: In response to your request for a geologist's take on the oil spill, here is one.
It is conceivable that if millions of gallones of oil were injected into the San Andreas fault system slippage could trigger a local earthquake. But the emphasis is on the word "local." The Army stopped pumping waste products from nerve gas production into deep wells in Colorado in the 1960s or 70s because the pumping was triggering small to moderate seismic events.
But the scale of tectonic plate movements is orders of magnitude greater than these possibilities, even if the spill in the Gulf were near a major fault system, which it is not.
Large earthquakes, such as the one in Haiti occur every year, somewhere on the planet. If there were a pattern, it would have been discovered by now. On a time scale of hundreds of millions of years, the earth is boiling, so it is not surprising that the outermost (colder) materials sometimes crack and move around (hence the plate movements), producing these events.
But the BP oil spill is small potatoes compared to the things that drive plate movements.
So geologists are OK with calling the equivalent of a torn artery "spill", then? Guess you weren't impressed with the article. ;)
Thank you, sheepherder (interesting contrast of career references here). You put things in perspective. And I am sick of hearing this gusher described as a spill or even more egregious, a leak.
Even without seismic events, the damage will still be catastrophic. And if it goes on long enough to get pulled into the Gulf Stream, we will be facing some very angry Europeans. These corporations have the attitude of two year olds when it comes to consequences. That CEO finger pointing scene in the Congressional hearing room must have been quite a sight. I immediately thought of the three stooges.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
"I immediately thought of the three stooges."
Great idea for some YouTube comedy, casting Moe as BP, Larry as Transocean, and of course Curly as Halliburton.
Shemp would make a better Halliburton.
superman is dead
I do not believe that because you are a geologist you necessarily are aware of all the interconnections of the earth and its systems. The years and years of taking billions of gallons of oil out of the earth may have done many things we are unaware of. YET.
Now we add a steady stream from deep under the ocean.
The lessons i'm getting from everywhere these days is all the masters of the universe aren't and that means lots of scientists too. That doesn't mean I'm anti science or don't understand its usefulness. It just isn't all there is, neither is money or
brains.
We got the MOU's screwing up the economy worldwide for their benefit
we got the masters of "Defense" training our military to be as offensive as possible, and to rack up enemies around the world.
The oil men have been ravaging the planet and planning more destruction.
We are meant to fear and revere these sociopaths and too many people do and too many others are intimidated.
They know what they are do beyond quarterly profit statements
Its takes a quality the raving right is trying to extinguish, empathy, to work with the earth intelligently and to live with all the others on it.
We change or die.
The Man vs Nature battle must end.
It may be too late
artemix: I agree, "The Man vs Nature battle must end."
And, there is still so much we don't know.
In an interview, after his 1974 film The Phantom of Liberty was released, Luis Buñuel was asked about ecology and pollution:
"I acknowledge that mankind's irrational destruction of nature bothers me a lot. Mankind is slowly committing suicide -- or, not so slowly: each day it accelerates -- producing all kinds of wastes: corporal, industrial, atomic, poisoning the earth, the sea, and the air. He destroys the very environment that gives him his sustenance. Centuries and centuries of civilization to arrive at this: What a piece of work is man! No other animal would be so stupid. Plagues of locusts are sporadic, they have a limit..."
"The Army stopped pumping waste products from nerve gas production into deep wells in Colorado in the 1960s or 70s because the pumping was triggering small to moderate seismic events." -- sheepherder
Interesting!
Isn't part of the so-called "clean coal" plan to somehow remove the CO2, compress it into a liquid, and then, to inject the liquid, deep into the earth, into depleted natural gas fields and other geological formations? I remember watching a news report on Democracy Now! about this process, and that is when I began to wonder about what might happen when the process was actually carried out -- e.g. earthquakes, seismic events, etc.
I am NOT a scientist, but as Sioux Rose stated in another post, "the hip bone's connected to the thigh bone," and on and on. If one element is removed, or added, for instance, as in cooking and baking -- the bread rises or it falls, according to any number of different details, including the humidity in the air. Why wouldn't similar events unfold beneath the earth, with additions or subtractions?
"But the BP oil spill is small potatoes compared to the things that drive plate movements." -- sheepherder
The author, and other scientists, are describing the oil explosion in the Gulf as a blowout! The description hardly reads like "small potatoes."
Thanks, Sioux Rose, for asking the question, again. Like you, I have wondered if there is any correlation in these catastrophic events.
I have a vague memory of reading about the film you mentioned, but I did NOT see it. I will look to see if I can find it somewhere online.
This article should answer the questions you asked.
http://pesn.com/2005/01/12/6900060_Oil_Earthquakes_and_Tsunamis/earlier_draft.htm
Wait, isn't BP 'too big to fail'? Maybe physics, geology, and other sciences aren't buying the current spin. Oh, I get it, the giant (or huge?) corporation won't fail, just one of their unregulated profit-making enterprises is failing visibly and disastrously.
Please don't connect this ecological disaster with the Three Stooges. The boys may have been chuckleheads, but they were not evil. They always helped the widows and orphans. I demand an apology, nyuk nyuk nyuk.
This is a great post but please not Pandora, not another feminine /evil equation. Surely our masters of the universe and the oilmen are working in rather macho domains where women have little to say. Of course we are all implicated in the fate of the planet but there is also no doubt that some have had more power than others.