America`s Gulf: New Report Says It`s Dying

Black Robe,

Natural seeps do not flow at at 50,000 barrels/day. Yes we need the oil but not in the messy manner BP delivers it through the blown well.

You are missing the point. BP could have drilled safer and save us all this mess. As we investigate more into the disaster, it becomes abundantly clear that this disaster need not have happen.

America`s Gulf Disaster: Accidental or Deliberate?

http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=625604

Even if we have to continue drilling for oil, don't you think we should advocate a safer approach instead of BP's reckless manner to drive off the cliff. The need for oil does not give BP the right to destroy other people's lives and Mother Earth.

Are you saying BP did no wrong?

Kyleaarons

...the long sometimes very critical article leads me to believe some of this is turning table a little too far on what may or may not be going on.

"Long and critical" cannot be the criteria used to judge the credibility of any article. I would be the first to admit there are many out there who would not hesitate to cry wolf to bring attention to themselves. But among the load of trash are genuine cries of help and genuine articles giving detailed analysis of what is wrong with this world. There are also deliberate "muddle the pool" antics so that the truth remains hidden with the trash. I use logic and whatever database of knowledge I have to judge - not length or critical/favourable tone.

In fact it is easier to trip over a long article than a short one, especially if the facts are incomplete, not right or if the purpose of the article is to conceal the truth. It is easier to judge the credibility of a long article since inconsistencies or discrepancies are bound to show up if the article is not telling the truth. It is always easier to tell the truth than to fabricate a story like it is easier to record actual field seismic data than to fabricate them without obvious flaws in office.

There are a lot of professionals out there who cannot voice out too critically as their livelihood is still dependent on the system that feeds them. I understand. I too was in that situation.

I could have stayed at the sideline and watch the whole charade being played out - and guess what? BP would have won hands down unfairly because the odds are stacked against the "small people" like us. If BP had not been so deceitful, so unscrupulous, so scheming ....etc I might just enjoy the episode in the comfort of my home. But conscience, moral values and the need to assist the oppressed, the victims and down-trodden would not let me rest peacefully in my retirement. There are human beings who would help and contribute without expectation. I had received assistance in my darkest hour of my life and is eternally grateful to those who help others in need. Please read this beautiful Christmas story I seeded.

"I wish I had some way to thank you," I said. "I appreciate what you've done."

"Not a problem," he said again. "If you feel the need to thank me, the next time you see someone in trouble, you help them out. That will pay me back amply.

"Tell them to pay you back the same way and soon the world will be a better place."

http://bklim.newsvine.com/_news/2010/12/25/5711962-bbc-news-a-real-good-samaritan-a-christmas-story.

The very fact there is hyped photos showing a nuke explosion and a photo-shopped picture of a flaming bird telling us the end of days is coming tells me there is a defiant addendabehind this and not all of it is science. Furthermore the same underwater photos are used way too often.

When the oil spill disaster blew there were many good Samaritans who recorded the rov videos and took time to post them on you-tube. There are those like Gregg Hall who brought the recorded video on the beaches to world attention. Others like Dr Termotto,Trisha, Riki Ott (too many to mention), write articles to inform the world the truth when world was over whelmed by the main stream media with lopsided news and distorted truths to put BP on the good light for the mess they have created.

For a while they were contented with the amateurish and speculative interpretation of the ROV video. They were laughing behind the scene at the wild imaginations spun off from their "technical guidance" given freely on the supposedly technical forums. That was when I decided to step in. Behind the scene I wrote to advise them of the right interpretation of these ROV videos. For example every rising cloud of gas-oil-dispersant mixture was "put down as ROV thrust wake". I showed how the calculated velocity, time, distance, relative movement, altitude, coords and many other attributes could be used to determine whether these "clouds" were real oil-gas-dispersant mixture or Rov thrusts blowing up clouds of sediment.

The fudged coords, hyped photos and video showing the "missiles", sinking of the Choester Holiday due to the hull being corroded, ROV recording of a vessel in motion etc all started to show up much later. Why? I suppose to create the atmosphere of confusion again after the masses were starting to wise up on the legitimate ROV videos. Again I put out words on how to distinguish these fakes from the real info on real ROV data. I spent half my life looking at fake certificates, fake seismic data, fake bathymetric data, almost all the fakes you can find in the offshore industry so these fakes pictures and videos are really no challenge at all.

Obviously there are paid bloggers and "data adulterers" out there to muddle the pool. So please do not use the "same lame excuse" to discredit the good work put up by these unsung heroes (a few whom I had dedicated in my articles). However, I have stopped dedicating them as I found them reporting to me their computers were hacked into etc. So are all these are coincidences. I know many do not like long write up but I intentionally keep this long to prove a point - that I do not trip over after so many months unlike some of those "distorted truth" articles you have perhaps read and dislike. I have written a lot on this ART of Mass Deception. Please read them to get an idea of how far they were willing to go to deceive. For a QC consultant who has seen so many deceptions, this "disaster movie" tops them all.

Like many, I followed the intense discussions at The Oildrum.com (TOD) to get some fair technical coverage of the BP’s oil spill disaster. As the disaster wore on, I started to wonder why industry experts like Art Berman, Rockman and many supporting actors (Rocdoc, PinkFud, Quaking, CraigWcoop & others) were so defensive of BP’s lies and zealously stamping out any independent bloggers’ views. If they had been truly professional and interested in seeking and disseminating the truth of the disaster, why were they not discussing incriminating issues that BP seems to be avoiding? Granted that nuking the gushing well was not really a good idea, but why should they be bitterly thrashing Matt Simmons’ apparently valid assertions as well.

If there had been no comments at all from TOD’s industry experts on my bathy posting dated 24 July 2010, I would not have been so convinced of BP’s deceits and willful mass deception to cover up the long chain of human errors leading to the disaster. Even though there had been visits from BP’s goons to my column and in particular the Bathy posting, they did not want to bring more attention to my blog by commenting.

On 29 July2010-10:30am, Robert Rapier’s posted “A Critical Examination of Matt Simmons’ Claims on the Deepwater Spill”. It must have been a tremendous group effort involving multiple Oil Drum staff members particularly Joules Burn, Art Berman, Euan Mearns and Robert Rapier, to compile all those satellite photos, statistics and causes of methane emission (including belching cattle) just to put down one man.

Just when they thought they had successfully “snuffed out” the last flame of argument against BP (after an exhaustive day hammering down Matt Simmons), someone posted my article, Why Is BP’s Macondo Blowout So Disastrous & Beyond Patch-Up? for discussion the next day. My diagrams and geological model must have infuriated those BP’s goons at TOD. Not only were my diagrams more beautiful than theirs, many impartial bloggers seemed to think my geohazards assessment made a lot more sense. It must have been most frustrating for those BP’s goons to have another sprout of doubts springing to life, so soon after the last one was snuffed out.

http://bklim.newsvine.com/_news/2010/09/03/5039904-forensic-analysis-of-bps-bathymetric-chart

Thanks TBone for dropping in. FR sent.

Dear Nightbreeze, an excellent point you made Sir. Thank you. FR sent.

Just to clarify one point however, I do not believe the characterization of flight bans in Europe as analogous to "over-reaction and over-simplification of facts" in geohazards assessments is entirely accurate.

I am so glad I finally have someone from the airline profession to query me further on that example since last year (2010). I commented on the BBC, Chanel News Asia, New York Post etc and never got the comments posted. Since then I have posted it several times including a paper I presented in June 2010.

In that flight (BA09 flight 1982), the plane was within 200 km of the vertical column of ash cloud (inhomogeneous mix particles of volcanic glass). Discovery Channel showed an excellent documentary on it. Bless them for these informative shows.

Galunggung (sp?) in Indonesia. All four jet engines quit within one minute. The plane dropped from 36,000 feet to 13,000 feet before the crew was able to restart each of the engines. (Pilots have found that jet engines can often be restarted once the aircraft drops to a lower altitude, as the glass on the engine parts hardens, shatters, and falls away.)

The keyword here is "vertical column" or thick strata of ash cloud. How far would a jet have travelled in 30 seconds? From http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/JobyJosekutty.shtml, with an average speed of 250m/s, the distance is 7.5 km. Therefore the thickness of the ash stratum or strata must total at least 7km for the jet engines to be clogged up by the molten volcanic ash. (I am using 30 secs arbitrarily). In the 2010 volcanic eruptions, I would not recommend the airlines to fly across Iceland, since the ash clouds would be much thicker than this. You can see this from the photos taken from the ground below at a distance (angle shots).

But by the time the ashes had floated over Europe, thickness (factor 1) would have been considerably less. Again the volume spread over an area many times the size of Iceland.

Factor 2 - the particle size of the ash would have been much finer over Europe, (particle size distribution vs distance and the velocity of the air currents).

Factor 3 - the ash would have been dispersed resulting in the density or concentration of the ash in air to be much lower over Europe than over Iceland.

Factor 4 - the thin ash strata would have separated into more uniform particle size at each strata ie light and finer ash particles at higher altitude and heavier ash at lower altitude. Near to the source at Iceland, the ash cloud is an inhomogeneous mix. If you remember in the TOP KILL of well A, they tried to use "junk shots" to create turbulent and disruptive flows to have a better chance of blocking the gas-oil gush. The same principle applies.

I am not suggesting that the Airline industry "relax" their excellent and tight enforcement. I wish such enforcement is possible or so readily accepted in the oil industry as we have clearly seen in the BP disaster. But grounding all the flights caused hardships and billions of dollars lost not to mention the disruption to modern society - finance, business etc. We rely on satellite pictures - an excellent tool but we must add the necessary attributes to the analyses. Finally when the airlines could not stand the losses, some brave souls flew the jets to prove what could have been calculated at the onset. On hindsight, experiments and researches could have been performed to work out more criteria for banning specific zones in preparation for another volcanic eruption (more frequent volcanic activities forecast) .

I brought up this issue (and excellent example) because in the geohazards industry, most of the experts would use the most visible attributes in their analyses ignoring the more important unseen ones. These are usually the more conspicuous attributes.

In the BP disaster, even the most evident attributes were ignored as I have already shown in the forensic analyses on the bathymetric data and some of the geological factors. I have not yet shown the evidences from the deeper seismic section and deeper geology. Were they incompetent - No I do not think so. But I have seen many professionals (vessel masters, geologists, surveyors etc) thrown off their jobs when they tried to put some practical and professional senses into the "business - commercial plans. Speak up and be damned but in the dismissal reports - these unsung heroes were put down for insubordination, troublesome, incooperative etc. History is written by the victors and in these true cases I have witnessed first hand - job performance is written by the immediate boss. Again I do not advocate objection without reasons.

All these would have fallen on deaf ears if not for a disaster of this magnitude which they could not cover up. But you can clearly see the difference between the Total Flight Ban over Europe and the BP disaster. One was clearly "naturally accidental"; the other "manually accidental" if there are such words or as Dr Termotto coined it MIHOP.

Thanks Nightbreeeze.

My area of expertise is not on weather, high altitude jet stream and atmospheric conditions as you are all aware of. My observations were made from my geohazards perspectives. I do appreciate the points you brought up and would be interested to learn more from you. Perhaps you can write or seed some articles for us to indulge in further discussion.

My point was: Was the blanket and sudden total ban on the whole European Airspace absolutely necessary? The "haze of volcanic ash" did not suddenly appear over Europe like the more recent "deep freeze" over night. Perhaps there could be prior warnings or phased in reduction of flights so that those in urgent need of travel can take the higher risk while others can postpone their trips to ease the congestion. Of course there are long term effects and other liability concerns, so if we can avoid them altogether the better. But "absolute clear skies" are getting harder to find nowadays.

We also do not always have "absolute clear skies" in the areas we want to drill either. Many times the situation is cloudy just as in the "volcanic eruption" example which was used to illustrate a dilemma the geohazards experts had. We map amplitude anomalies from our seismic sections to make our geohazards forecasts (the 3D seismics are just like satellite photos). In a nutshell, anomalously high amplitudes are indicative gas hazards but there are many geological considerations as well. In time, the assessment of gas hazards evolved and simplified into just the area distribution of these amplitude anomalies ie. the larger the aerial extent the more hazardous the gas hazards were. The oil companies had a hard time shifting their well locations to avoid these apparently "menacing high amplitude anomalies" aka gas hazards. In some areas, these apparent gas hazards covered the entire sites at many levels. The oil companies had nowhere to drill and their exploration programmes really screwed up .

Just like the brave pilots who flew in defiance of the ban to prove the fallacy of the ban, the oil companies started to drill into some of these mapped "gas hazards". They drilled through without hitting any gas hazards. The myth of the gas hazards burst and they did not trust the geohazards assessment anymore. However to conform to offshore regulations they still carry out these geohazards surveys but they are treated more as "necessary nuisances" rather than a true geohazards evaluation tool. They don't take these geohazards assessments seriously anymore.

Chances are BP did not really bother with the geohazards survey and assessment as well. That is why their geohazards analyses could be so easily torn to pieces. A really useful tool was rendered useless and untrustworthy by the oil industry due to oversimplification. It might sound like a fairy tale but it is true. Weather forecast might in time develop into "air travel hazards advisory" or "atmospheric hazards assessment". Then we oversimplify it and we get a meaningless tool; another form to fill and another box to tick. Safety in form but not in spirit.

So we all agree that direct measurement is needed over visual detection.

Without getting too technical the analogy is we rather SEE than MEASURE despite the numbers of tricks the eyes can play on us. Given the choice, most of us would prefer the gift of sight over the gift of hearing, visual over measurement technology.

There are available technologies for measuring not only particle concentrations but thicknesses and other attributes as well but nobody sees a need to develop them until there is a public outcry or consumer demand. We need not live with these uncertainties in this modern age. The knowledge that volcanic ash could stall jet engines were known before the 1982 BA flight and was proven in that flight. In the 28 years we thought the "visual" detection was good enough without the need to develop measurement techniques. And nothing will be done until we have the next major volcanic eruption costing billions of dollars.

You may wonder where all this discussion is leading to.

Similarly in the gas hazards assessment (as in the volcanic ash analogy) we should measure the concentration of gas, volume of gas, vertical extent d the permeability of the strata containing the gas and many other geophysical attributes instead of just relying solely on the often misleading aerial extent. From and by experience we can arrive at surprisingly very accurate predictions if we have these "invisible but measurable" attributes. So although we have available measurement technologies yet we do not develop and use them.

So although we had the ability to clearly foresee the geohazards at the 3 Macondo well locations and predict the immense problems they would have in drilling through the faults in close vicinity to the salt structure (escarpment slope) they nevertheless went ahead.

As we say, "There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots." Perhaps, as you say, they proved the models wrong in this instance. They could just have easily proven the models right given the right, unforseen circumstances.

You made a very good point. Good hazards assessment is strategic elimination of possibilities. In 30 years I have never blown a well despite a number of sites notorious for gas hazards. Some locations and trajectories are less risky than others within a given area. There are calculated risks as in calculated boldness with limited risks which can be handled safely and there are unacceptable risks as in imprudent boldness. Unfortunately the Macondo wells belong to the latter and sadly this is the prevalence rather than the exception - the result of distorted vision over the unseen measurements.