MONDAY, JULY 19, 2010
Deepwater Oil Spill - bubble, bubble oil and trouble
UPDATE on this post. Although there has been some additional discussion, and the test has been allowed to run another 24-hours, not much else has changed over the past 24 hours, apart from knowing that the anomaly on the BOP is a slight leak on the flexible joint. I am going, therefore, just to add to the earlier post, to give an update on the overall situation.
I rather suspect that we will know a lot more about the behavior of the sediments and matter at the bottom of the Gulf within the next year or so than we have learned in the past hundred years. I am looking at the view from the Skandi ROV 2 at 10 am on Monday, and it is looking at a patch of mud that is bubbling a little, though over a relatively significant area (that of the camera illumination). There is no trace of oil venting and flowing upwards (and a fish just swam by) so there will be, no doubt, some samples taken, and, over time, we will learn what is the cause.
There were other views, from different ROVs that seemed to show clouds of something, but the definition was poor and it was not clear that this was not mud that the ROV itself has stirred up. This has been the case several times today, in watching the video, though there were, in the seep area, shots of small drops of oil heading up to the sea surface.
Given the debate that is developing between BP and the panel that advises Secretary Chu and Admiral Allen, the redirection of the thought process to include another attempt at a top kill, brings in a whole pile of new matter to be used in those discussions
I rather suspect that we will know a lot more about the behavior of the sediments and matter at the bottom of the Gulf within the next year or so than we have learned in the past hundred years. I am looking at the view from the Skandi ROV 2 at 10 am on Monday, and it is looking at a patch of mud that is bubbling a little, though over a relatively significant area (that of the camera illumination). There is no trace of oil venting and flowing upwards (and a fish just swam by) so there will be, no doubt, some samples taken, and, over time, we will learn what is the cause.
There were other views, from different ROVs that seemed to show clouds of something, but the definition was poor and it was not clear that this was not mud that the ROV itself has stirred up. This has been the case several times today, in watching the video, though there were, in the seep area, shots of small drops of oil heading up to the sea surface.
Given the debate that is developing between BP and the panel that advises Secretary Chu and Admiral Allen, the redirection of the thought process to include another attempt at a top kill, brings in a whole pile of new matter to be used in those discussions
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