Bubble of methane triggered rig blast

[lynnf]

likely story, eh? what do you think?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill


ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – The deadly blowout of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to interviews with rig workers conducted during BP's internal investigation.

..

The gas flooded into an adjoining room with exposed ignition sources, he said.

...

[lynnf]

Hmmm, the article on the gas (OP) mentioned crystals, could it be gas crystals instead of ice?



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – A BP PLC official is saying icelike crystals formed inside of an oil containment box when it was placed over a massive oil leak and that crews have had to move the contraption away to study the problem.

...

[awake]

When you see certain trash media outlets pissing themselves that the reaction isn't what they wanted, and terms like "handed" and "tailor made" to describe the opportunity of a crisis / sabotage , it kind of gives it away.

This event was brought about for legislative influencing purposes. The whos and hows will come out some day.

[forsmant]

methane bubbles are actually quite common in that area. Brought down many of things in the bermuda triangle.

[awake]

Does a methane bubble somehow know about the offshore drilling permissions that need to get off the climate bill ASAP because it would screw with domestic cartelization efforts?

[QueenB4Liberty]

Does a methane bubble somehow know about the offshore drilling permissions that need to get off the climate bill ASAP because it would screw with domestic cartelization efforts?

It is an odd coincidence. But I don't believe it was a conspiracy.

[lynnf]

It is an odd coincidence. But I don't believe it was a conspiracy.



from the story:

"A group of BP executives were on board the Deepwater Horizon rig celebrating the project's safety record, according to the transcripts. Far below, the rig was being converted from an exploration well to a production well."

so, if it was an inside job, they rigged it to happen when they were partying on the rig --- not likely, unless someone was trying to assassinate the BP executives. that could be, but I'm not buying it.

lynn

[awake]

Who said it was an inside job? The goal was to create a huge oil spill to get Washington to take a second look at offshore drilling and shut it down for "safety reasons". Ask yourself who would want this? Who benefits from production restrictions?

If a transfer truck wipes out and spills its load all over the highway do you close all highways and get rid of trucks to ensure safety?

[lynnf]

Who said it was an inside job?


This event was brought about for legislative influencing purposes. The whos and hows will come out some day.



that says inside job, unless you are saying the CIA did it clandestinely. which is still basically an inside job because the corporations own and run the government.

lynn

[awake]

that says inside job, unless you are saying the CIA did it clandestinely. which is still basically an inside job because the corporations own and run the government.

lynn

Inside the government, I'm not so sure, inside the oil industry, I would say possibly... They have been using the submersibles as a means to correct the problem, thus in that capacity, they could have been used to create it.

[awake]

...But all of this might not make a hill of beans, as the crime scene is 5000ft below the sea.

[lynnf]

...But all of this might not make a hill of beans, as the crime scene is 5000ft below the sea.


yeah, like 9/11 ground zero is right in the big middle of one of the most populous cities in the world and they didn't even investigate that crime! fat chance for looking at one a mile down. that's at the pressure of about 150 atmospheres, i.e. 150 times the pressure that you feel under the 1 atmosphere we live in at the surface.


lynn

[QueenB4Liberty]

Inside the government, I'm not so sure, inside the oil industry, I would say possibly... They have been using the submersibles as a means to correct the problem, thus in that capacity, they could have been used to create it.

This isn't good for the oil industry, so why would someone from inside the oil industry want this to happen? It really doesn't benefit anyone at all.

[Zippyjuan]

Oil and natural gas are extremely common to find together in deposits. In earlier days, the gas was often just burned off. Safety has improved so you don't hear about blowouts as much as you used to but they certainly do happen. If you do get a bubble of gas coming up, it doesn't take much to ignite it. There is no conspiracy in that. There are many examples here: http://home.versatel.nl/the_sims/rig/index.htm

What they think happened here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/08/AR2010050803429_2.html?sid=ST2010050800010

What went wrong?

A target of the investigation, according to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who chairs the House energy subcommittee and met with oil company officials last week, is the final cementing job on the well. Four employees of Halliburton -- founded by Erle Halliburton in 1924 as the Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company -- were on Deepwater Horizon. They had overseen the main task of cementing the well just 20 hours before the blowout.

This is done by plunging a slurry of cement down the hollow pipe to the bottom of the well, where the cement passes through a one-way valve, then rises back up through the narrow gap, or annulus, between the steel casing and the rock walls of the hole. This stabilizes the casing in the drill hole and keeps gas and oil from rising through the drill hole to the surface.

Or at least that's the idea. If something goes awry, such as cracks forming in the cement or the cement failing to set properly, gas bubbles can seep upward, and the pressure can begin to build toward calamitous proportions.

Kenneth Deffeyes, a professor emeritus of geology at Princeton who has studied reports of the blowout, said it's possible that "the cement job wasn't heavy enough and the gas bubbled up through it." But, he added, another factor could have been a malfunction of the valve, or "shoe," at the bottom of the well, which could have let gas and oil into the steel casing.



As for the ice, the well is extremely deep underwater- a mile down. Not only is there tremendous pressure down there but it is also very cold. They were worried that the box might not work because at those temperatures the oil might be too thick to flow through the pipe they intended to use to pump the oil to the surface. As for who would benefit from this, BP certainly would not. Besides the fees they paid for the rights to the area, a deep water well can cost $100 million.

[noxagol]

I don't understand how methane can explode without oxygen. Unless they are meaning a pressure explosion and not a combustion explosion.

[Zippyjuan]

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20100508/cdb667ad-3263-4657-ba9d-eaedb06dd901

The original blowout was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to interviews with rig workers conducted during BP PLC's internal investigation.

Deep beneath the seafloor, methane is in a slushy, crystalline form. Deep sea oil drillers often encounter pockets of methane crystals as they dig into the earth.

As the bubble rose up the drill column from the high-pressure environs of the deep to the less pressurized shallows, it intensified and grew, breaking through various safety barriers, said Robert Bea, a University of California Berkley engineering professor and oil pipeline expert who detailed the interviews to an Associated Press reporter.

"A small bubble becomes a really big bubble," Bea said. "So the expanding bubble becomes like a cannon shooting the gas into your face."

___


At the rig, the methane would be in contact with oxygen in the air. It would be like somebody with a natural gas leak in their house and somebody flipped a switch which caused a spark to ignite it and most of the house blew up. Imagine a much bigger mass of methane coming along. Since the pressure at 5000 feet below sea level is very strong, the gas greatly expands as it rises towards the surface.

[Vessol]

This isn't good for the oil industry, so why would someone from inside the oil industry want this to happen? It really doesn't benefit anyone at all.

Says who? Scarcity has always increased value.

[QueenB4Liberty]

Says who? Scarcity has always increased value.

But oil is important to the running of civilization. I think people in the oil industry care about living comfortably more than they do about profits.

[Vessol]

But oil is important to the running of civilization. I think people in the oil industry care about living comfortably more than they do about profits.

It's not like they burned off the entire supply of the worlds oil. Just one well in the Gulf and closure of many more.

Of course they don't want to get rid of it, but they do want it to appear to the consumer that it is in shorter supply and thus increase its prices.

[QueenB4Liberty]

Perhaps, but it still wouldn't benefit them in the long run, especially since jobs will be lost because of this. It could be theirs.

[awake]

This isn't good for the oil industry, so why would someone from inside the oil industry want this to happen? It really doesn't benefit anyone at all.

It benefits the oil industry if it can use the force of government to restrict supply and boost prices, it also benefits the government coffers for fuel taxes are a percentage of that price.

There is every incentive for the industry to attack itself. I am not saying BP did this to themselves, but some one in the the oil industry as a whole looking to cripple their competition, as well as invoking emergency production restrictions.

As well, if there are certain elements in the oil industry that are seeking state ownership of the oil industry this helps this along as well...Business likes the security of state control and guaranteed profits, it absolves them of "the cut throat competition of the market".

[tangent4ronpaul]

http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=92765

[...]

James: When you close the stack, it's basically a humongous hydraulic valve that closes off everything from below and above. It's like a gate valve on the sea floor.

Mark: OK

James: That's a very simplistic way of explaining a BOP. It's a very complicated piece of equipment.

Mark: Basically, it's like a plug. But go ahead.

James: Correct. Once they open that plug to go ahead and start cementing the top of the well (the well bore), we cement the top, and then basically we would pull off. Another rig would slide over and do the rest of the completions work. When they opened the well is when the gas well kicked, and we took a humongous gas bubble kick up through the well bore. It literally pushed the sea water all the way to the crown of the rig, which is about 240 feet in the air.

Mark: OK, so gas got into it and blew the top off of it.

James: Right.

Mark: Now don't hang up. I want to continue with you because I want to ask you some questions related to this, OK? Including, has this sort of thing ever happened before, and why you think it may have happened, OK?

Mark: Alright, back to James, that's not his real name, Dallas WBAP. I'm not going to give the working title of what you did there either, James, but I wanted to finish. So, the gentleman was right about the point that obviously some gas got into the, I'll call it the funnel, OK?

James: Correct, and that's not uncommon, Mark. Anytime you're drilling an oil well, there is a constant battle between the mud weight, the drilling fluid that we use to maintain pressure, and the wellbore itself. There's a balance. The well is pushing gas one way and you are pushing mud the other way. So there is a delicate balance that has to be maintained at all times to keep the gas from coming back in, what we call the kicks. You know, we always get gas back in the mud, but the goal of the whole situation is to try to control the kick. Not allow the pressure to differentiate between the vessel and the wellbore.

Mark: Well, in this case, obviously, too much gas got in.

James: Correct, and this well had a bad history of producing lots of gas. It was touch and go a few times and was not terribly uncommon. You’re almost always going to get gas back from a well. We have systems to deal with the gas, however.

Mark: So, what may have happened here?

James: Well, the sheer volume and pressure of gas that hit all at once which was more than the safeties and controls we had in place could handle.

Mark: And that’s like a mistake on somebody's part or maybe its just Mother Nature every now and then kicks up, or what?

James: Mother Nature every now and then kicks up. The pressures that we're dealing with out there, drilling deeper, deeper water, deeper overall volume of the whole vessel itself, you’re dealing with 30 to 40 thousand pounds per square inch range -- serious pressures.

Mark: Not to offend you, but we just verified that you are who you are, which I'm sure you already knew that. I would like to hold you over to the next hour because I would like to ask a few more questions about this, as well as what happened exactly after the explosion, during the explosion and after. Can you wait with us?

James: Sure, I don't know how much of that I can share, but I'll do my best.

Mark: Alright, well I don't want to get you in trouble. So if you can stay, fine, but if you can't, we understand.
Part 2 of Mark's Interview:

Mark: We are talking to a caller under an assumed name who was on the rig when it blew up, and we've been talking about how it happened. And now James, I want to take you to the point of when it happened. What exactly happened? Where were you standing?

James: Well obviously, the gas blew the sea water out of the riser, once it displaced all of the sea water, the gas began to spill out on the deck and up through the center of the rig floor. The rig, you have to imagine a rectangle, about 400 feet by 300 feet, with the derrick and the rig floor sitting directly in the center. As this gas is now heavier than air, it starts to settle in different places. From that point, something ignited the gas, which would have caused the first major explosion.

Mark: Now, what might ignite the gas, do you know?

James: Any number of things, Mark. All rig floor equipment is what they consider intrinsically safe, meaning it cannot generate a spark, so that these types of accidents cannot occur. However, as much gas that came out as fast as it did, it would have spilled over the entire rig fairly rapidly, you know, within a minute. I would think that the entire rig would be enveloped in gas. Now a lot of this stuff, you can't smell, you can't taste it, it's just there, and it's heavier than oxygen. As it settled in, it could have made it to a space that wasn't intrinsically safe. Something as simple as static electricity could have ignited the first explosion, which set off a series of explosions.

Mark: Alright, so what happened? You're standing where? You're sitting somewhere? What happened?

James: Well, I was in a location that was a pretty good ways from the initial blast. I wasn't affected by the blast. I was able to make it out and get up forward where the life boats were. The PA system was still working. There was an announcement overhead that this was NOT a drill. Obviously, we have fire drills every single week to prepare for emergencies like this (fire and abandonment drills). Over the intercom came the order to report to life boats one and two, that this was not a drill, that there is a fire, and we proceeded that way.

Mark: So, the eleven men who died, were they friends of yours?

James: Yes sir, they were.

Mark: Did they die instantly?

James: I would have to assume so. Yes, sir. I would think that they were directly inside the bomb when it went off, the gas being the bomb.

Mark: So, the bomb being the gas explosion?

James: Correct. They would have been in the belly of the beast.

Mark: Now, let me ask you, and we have to be careful what we say because there are people that will run wild with ideas, so I just want to make sure

James: Sure.

Mark: So, let me ask you this, why would the government send in a SWAT team to a rig? What’s that all about?

James: Well, believe it or not, its funny you would mention that. Transocean, the drilling company, maintains a SWAT team and that's their sole purpose. They're experts in their field. The BOP, the blowout preventer, they call that subsea equipment. They have their own SWAT teams that they send out to the rigs to service and maintain that equipment.

Mark: Yeah but I'm talking about what are interior SWAT teams? What is that?

James: The interior, from the government now, I don't have an idea about that, that's beyond me. The other gentleman also mentioned the USGS that comes out and does the surveys. I've been on that particular rig for three years, offshore for five years, and I've seen a USGS one time. What we do have on a very regular basis is the MMS, which is the Minerals Management Service.

Mark: They're all under the interior department.

James: OK. Yes. As a matter of fact, we were commended for our inspection record from the MMS. We are actually receiving an award from them for the highest level of safety and environmental awareness.

Mark: Well, I thought you were going to receive that award. Didn't they put it on hold?

James: No, we have actually received that award. We received it last year. We may have been ready to receive it again this year.

[...]

-t

[NiceGoing]

This article was taken from a very respectable source in the Health industry, but it strikes me as overblown and hysterical, so I wonder what folks here think, in light of what (little) is known so far.
-------------------------------------------------


Originally published May 8 2010

Is Gulf oil rig disaster far worse than we're being told?
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

http://www.naturalnews.com/028749_Gulf_of_Mexico_oil_spill.html


(NaturalNews) Reports about the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill have been largely underestimated, according to commentators, including Paul Noel, a Software Engineer for the U.S. Army at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. He believes that the pocket of oil that's been hit is so powerful and under so much pressure that it may be virtually impossible to contain it. And Noel is not the only person questioning the scope of this disaster.

A recent story from the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) reports that many independent scientists believe the leak is spewing far more than the 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, per day being reported by most media sources. They believe the leak could be discharging up to 25,000 barrels (more than one million gallons) of crude oil a day right now.

The riser pipe that was bent and crimped after the oil rig sank is restricting some of the flow from the tapped oil pocket, but as the leaking oil rushes into the well's riser, it is forcing sand with it at very high speeds and "sand blasting" the pipe (which is quickly eroding its structural integrity).

According to a leaked National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration memo obtained by an Alabama newspaper, if the riser erodes any further and creates more leaks, up to 50,000 barrels, or 2.1 million gallons, per day of crude oil could begin flooding Gulf waters every day.

When this disaster first occurred, the media downplayed it. BP spokespersons were quick to claim that the leakage was minimal and that crews would eventually be able to contain it. But as time went on, it became clear that things were not under control and that the spill was far more serious than we were originally told. (Gee, sound familiar? Remember Katrina?)

Yet some of the media reports still seem more like press releases than actual reporting because they continue to repeat what the public relations cleanup crews (pun intended) would like the public to believe rather than what's actually happening. Reality, it seems, has a nasty habit of interfering with corporate spin.


Cap and trade becomes "cap and pray"
The New York Times yesterday reported that BP is working on a large containment dome that is intended to cap the leak and catch the escaping oil so that it can be safely pumped to the surface. Meanwhile, crews are said to be working on fixing the broken blow-out preventer valve that should have stopped the leak from happening in the first place, but they have been unsuccessful thus far.

Almost every report says that BP is doing everything it can to contain the spill and stop the leak, even though the company claims it is not technically at fault. According to an article from the U.K. Daily Mail, BP's CEO Tony Hayward recently responded to the cleanup efforts by explaining, "This is not our accident but it is our responsibility to deal with it."

Swiss-based Transocean is the company that actually owned and operated the sunken rig. It manned the rig with its own crew and BP just leased it from Transocean (which makes you wonder why BP is so willing to take full responsibility for everything).

BP says that it's working on a relief well, but that it could take up to three months to complete. Until then, the company is trying several different approaches to at least slow the leak and hopefully stop it altogether.

Mind you, almost all of the information about the spill from day one has come directly from BP which obviously has every incentive to downplay the true environmental destruction that could be caused by this oil spill.

Even the word "spill" is incorrect. This isn't some ship of oil that spilled into the ocean -- it's a "volcano" of oil spewing from the belly of Mother Earth herself. It's under extremely high pressure, it's spewing a huge volume of oil directly into the ocean, and there so far seems to be no human-engineered way of stopping it (short of setting off an underground nuclear bomb near the well site).


Addressing the unanswered questions
According to the CSM article, environmental risk models are normally performed for pollutants like crude oil, yet not one model has yet been released for this incident by BP or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Many are wondering why this crucial information has not been made public. Could it be because the results of the model might seem too catastrophic?

Neither has there been an adequate explanation given for exactly why the oil rig exploded... twice! Some reports indicate that the crews responsible for properly cementing the well casing didn't do it right. Others suggest that the oil deposit was just too large and under too much pressure for the equipment to handle it. (Be careful where you poke around the planet if you can't handle what comes out, right?)

It's also important to note that, according to a recent New York Times article, Halliburton was actually the company responsible for all the cementing work on the rig, which brings a third party into the picture.

BP's federal permits allowed the company to drill up to 20,000 feet deep, but according to one of the workers who was onboard the rig during the explosion, drilling in excess of 22,000 feet had been taking place. This same worker is said to handle company records for BP, but BP has denied these allegations.

BP has declined to comment, however, on other allegations that the spill happened because it chose not to install necessary deep-water valves which would have acted as a last resort seal of protection in the event of an emergency.

Several other allegations include suspicions that the crews allowed gas to build up in the well bore and that the rig operator tried to detach too quickly from the well, causing a disruption.

BP, Halliburton and Transocean have all indicated that they are continuing to investigate the situation. When companies investigate themselves, however, the truth rarely comes out.


The possibility of an extinction event?
It's hard to say exactly what's going on in the Gulf right now, especially because there are so many conflicting reports and unanswered questions. But one thing's for sure: if the situation is actually much worse than we're being led to believe, there could be worldwide catastrophic consequences.

If it's true that millions upon millions of gallons of crude oil are flooding the Gulf with no end in sight, the massive oil slicks being created could make their way into the Gulf Stream currents, which would carry them not only up the East Coast but around the world where they could absolutely destroy the global fishing industries.

Already these slicks are making their way into Gulf wetlands and beaches where they are destroying birds, fish, and even oyster beds. This is disastrous for both the seafood industry and the people whose livelihoods depend on it. It's also devastating to the local wildlife which could begin to die off from petroleum toxicity. Various ecosystems around the world could be heavily impacted by this spill in ways that we don't even yet realize.

There's no telling where this continuous stream of oil will end up and what damage it might cause. Theoretically, we could be looking at modern man's final act of destruction on planet Earth, because this one oil rig blowout could set in motion a global extinction wave that begins with the oceans and then whiplashes back onto human beings themselves.

We cannot live without life in the oceans. Man is arrogant to drill so deeply into the belly of Mother Earth, and through this arrogance, we may have just set in motion events that will ultimately destroy us. In the future, we may in fact talk about life on Earth as "pre-spill" versus "post-spill." Because a post-spill world may be drowned in oil, devoid of much ocean life, and suffering a global extinction event that will crash the human population by 90 percent or more.

We may have just done to ourselves, in other words, what a giant meteorite did to the dinosaurs {SubscribeHealthRangerBlock}

[Zippyjuan]

The oil is definately still flowing and things could get extremely ugly when hurricane season hits. Even the oil currently being blocked by booms will be blasted potentially miles inland if a hurricane passes though that area and makes landfall. Even if it doesn't make landfall, it will still push a lot of oil ashore.

I am intrigued about the explosives idea to try to shut it off. But I guess the risk is that it could also open a bigger hole for the oil to come through. At this point the don't have any ideas for how to quickly deal with it. It will not stop flowing for quite some time and that will mean a very large amount of oil in the Gulf. The Exxon Valdez accident was puny compared to this one.

[Matt Collins]

Hmmm, the article on the gas (OP) mentioned crystals, could it be gas crystals instead of ice?Crystal meth? ;)


methane bubbles are actually quite common in that area.Mexican food can do that :p

[Matt Collins]

The oil is definately still flowing and things could get extremely ugly when hurricane season hits. Even the oil currently being blocked by booms will be blasted potentially miles inland if a hurricane passes though that area and makes landfall. Even if it doesn't make landfall, it will still push a lot of oil ashore.

I am intrigued about the explosives idea to try to shut it off. But I guess the risk is that it could also open a bigger hole for the oil to come through. I think that lighting it on fire might be intriguing.



At this point the don't have any ideas for how to quickly deal with it. It will not stop flowing for quite some time and that will mean a very large amount of oil in the Gulf. The Exxon Valdez accident was puny compared to this one.Got any numbers to compare them too?

And I don't understand how they wouldn't have a contingency plan in case of something like this. :confused::confused::confused:

[Zippyjuan]

Obviously the current flow (not really a spill) is still ongoing but I did get some numbers on the Exxon Valdez. They are currently estimating 5000 barrels a day from the Gulf of Mexico oil well (I thought it would be more than that but it is expected to ultimately exceed the Exxon spill- just not there yet).

Number on the current event (a of May 5th) : http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/30/national/main6447428.shtml

• The latest satellite image of the slick, taken Sunday night, indicates that it has actually shrunk since last week, but that only means some of the oil has gone underwater. The new image found oil covering about 2,000 square miles, rather than the roughly 3,400 square miles observed last Thursday, said Hans Graber of the University of Miami. The new image also shows that sizable patches have broken away and are moving to the north and east, Graber said.

• Oil is being spilled at a rate up to 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day, or 1.6 million since the explosion occurred last week. However, in their worst-case scenario, BP executives told members of a congressional committee that up to 2.5 million gallons a day could spill if the leaks worsened, though it would be more like 1.7 million gallons.

• As of today 170 vessels are responding on site, including skimmers, tugs, barges, and recovery vessels to assist in containment and cleanup efforts in addition to dozens of aircraft, remotely operated vehicles, and multiple mobile offshore drilling units.

• 367,881 feet boom (barrier) have been deployed to contain the spill; more than 1 million feet are available.

• More than 1 million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered.

• More than 156,000 gallons of dispersant have been deployed. An additional 230,138 gallons are available.

• Nine staging areas are in place and ready to protect sensitive shorelines in Biloxi, Miss.; Pensacola, Fla.; Venice, La.; Pascagoula, Miss.; Port Fourchon, La.; Port Sulphur, La.; Dauphin Island, Ala.; and Shell Beach, La.

• 7,484 personnel are involved in the response effort; an addition 2,000 volunteers have been trained to assist. BP is also coordinating with thousands of volunteers who have offered to help clear beaches of existing debris, to aid the efficiency of any necessary oil clean-up on shore; individuals who wish to assist may call (866) 448-5816 for information.


And Alaska:
http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/facts/qanda.cfm

How much oil was spilled?
Approximately 11 million gallons or 257,000 barrels or 38,800 metric tonnes. Picture the swimming pool at your school or in your community. The amount of spilled oil is roughly equivalent to 17 olympic-sized swimming pools.

How much oil was the Exxon Valdez carrying?
53,094,510 gallons or 1,264,155 barrels

How does the Exxon Valdez spill compare to other spills?
The Exxon Valdez spill, though still one of the largest ever in the United States, has dropped from the top 50 internationally (view a list of top oil spills worldwide). It is widely considered the number one spill worldwide in terms of damage to the environment, however. The timing of the spill, the remote and spectacular location, the thousands of miles of rugged and wild shoreline, and the abundance of wildlife in the region combined to make it an environmental disaster well beyond the scope of other spills.

How many miles of shoreline were impacted by oil?
Approximately 1,300 miles. 200 miles were heavily or moderately oiled (meaning the impact was obvious); 1,100 miles were lightly or very lightly oiled (meaning light sheen or occasional tarballs). By comparison, there is more than 9,000 miles of shoreline in the spill region.

How large an area did the spill cover?
From Bligh Reef the spill stretched 460 miles to the tiny village of Chignik on the Alaska Peninsula.

Click here to view a map of the spill

How was the spill cleaned up?
Complicated question. It took more than four summers of cleanup efforts before the effort was called off. Not all beaches were cleaned and some beaches remain oiled today. At its peak the cleanup effort included 10,000 workers, about 1,000 boats and roughly 100 airplanes and helicopters, known as Exxon's army, navy, and air force. It is widely believed, however, that wave action from winter storms did more to clean the beaches than all the human effort involved.

How much did it cost?
Exxon says it spent about $2.1 billion on the cleanup effort.

[Anti Federalist]

This account is accurate.

Also, when the drilling muds and spike fluid start getting pushed out into the open atmosphere from the well bore, they violently boil off the gasses that are infused in them under the extreme pressure of the well and sea floor, adding to the immediate conflagration.


http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=92765

[...]

James: When you close the stack, it's basically a humongous hydraulic valve that closes off everything from below and above. It's like a gate valve on the sea floor.

Mark: OK

James: That's a very simplistic way of explaining a BOP. It's a very complicated piece of equipment.

Mark: Basically, it's like a plug. But go ahead.

James: Correct. Once they open that plug to go ahead and start cementing the top of the well (the well bore), we cement the top, and then basically we would pull off. Another rig would slide over and do the rest of the completions work. When they opened the well is when the gas well kicked, and we took a humongous gas bubble kick up through the well bore. It literally pushed the sea water all the way to the crown of the rig, which is about 240 feet in the air.

Mark: OK, so gas got into it and blew the top off of it.

James: Right.

Mark: Now don't hang up. I want to continue with you because I want to ask you some questions related to this, OK? Including, has this sort of thing ever happened before, and why you think it may have happened, OK?

Mark: Alright, back to James, that's not his real name, Dallas WBAP. I'm not going to give the working title of what you did there either, James, but I wanted to finish. So, the gentleman was right about the point that obviously some gas got into the, I'll call it the funnel, OK?

James: Correct, and that's not uncommon, Mark. Anytime you're drilling an oil well, there is a constant battle between the mud weight, the drilling fluid that we use to maintain pressure, and the wellbore itself. There's a balance. The well is pushing gas one way and you are pushing mud the other way. So there is a delicate balance that has to be maintained at all times to keep the gas from coming back in, what we call the kicks. You know, we always get gas back in the mud, but the goal of the whole situation is to try to control the kick. Not allow the pressure to differentiate between the vessel and the wellbore.

Mark: Well, in this case, obviously, too much gas got in.

James: Correct, and this well had a bad history of producing lots of gas. It was touch and go a few times and was not terribly uncommon. You’re almost always going to get gas back from a well. We have systems to deal with the gas, however.

Mark: So, what may have happened here?

James: Well, the sheer volume and pressure of gas that hit all at once which was more than the safeties and controls we had in place could handle.

Mark: And that’s like a mistake on somebody's part or maybe its just Mother Nature every now and then kicks up, or what?

James: Mother Nature every now and then kicks up. The pressures that we're dealing with out there, drilling deeper, deeper water, deeper overall volume of the whole vessel itself, you’re dealing with 30 to 40 thousand pounds per square inch range -- serious pressures.

Mark: Not to offend you, but we just verified that you are who you are, which I'm sure you already knew that. I would like to hold you over to the next hour because I would like to ask a few more questions about this, as well as what happened exactly after the explosion, during the explosion and after. Can you wait with us?

James: Sure, I don't know how much of that I can share, but I'll do my best.

Mark: Alright, well I don't want to get you in trouble. So if you can stay, fine, but if you can't, we understand.
Part 2 of Mark's Interview:

Mark: We are talking to a caller under an assumed name who was on the rig when it blew up, and we've been talking about how it happened. And now James, I want to take you to the point of when it happened. What exactly happened? Where were you standing?

James: Well obviously, the gas blew the sea water out of the riser, once it displaced all of the sea water, the gas began to spill out on the deck and up through the center of the rig floor. The rig, you have to imagine a rectangle, about 400 feet by 300 feet, with the derrick and the rig floor sitting directly in the center. As this gas is now heavier than air, it starts to settle in different places. From that point, something ignited the gas, which would have caused the first major explosion.

Mark: Now, what might ignite the gas, do you know?

James: Any number of things, Mark. All rig floor equipment is what they consider intrinsically safe, meaning it cannot generate a spark, so that these types of accidents cannot occur. However, as much gas that came out as fast as it did, it would have spilled over the entire rig fairly rapidly, you know, within a minute. I would think that the entire rig would be enveloped in gas. Now a lot of this stuff, you can't smell, you can't taste it, it's just there, and it's heavier than oxygen. As it settled in, it could have made it to a space that wasn't intrinsically safe. Something as simple as static electricity could have ignited the first explosion, which set off a series of explosions.

Mark: Alright, so what happened? You're standing where? You're sitting somewhere? What happened?

James: Well, I was in a location that was a pretty good ways from the initial blast. I wasn't affected by the blast. I was able to make it out and get up forward where the life boats were. The PA system was still working. There was an announcement overhead that this was NOT a drill. Obviously, we have fire drills every single week to prepare for emergencies like this (fire and abandonment drills). Over the intercom came the order to report to life boats one and two, that this was not a drill, that there is a fire, and we proceeded that way.

Mark: So, the eleven men who died, were they friends of yours?

James: Yes sir, they were.

Mark: Did they die instantly?

James: I would have to assume so. Yes, sir. I would think that they were directly inside the bomb when it went off, the gas being the bomb.

Mark: So, the bomb being the gas explosion?

James: Correct. They would have been in the belly of the beast.

Mark: Now, let me ask you, and we have to be careful what we say because there are people that will run wild with ideas, so I just want to make sure

James: Sure.

Mark: So, let me ask you this, why would the government send in a SWAT team to a rig? What’s that all about?

James: Well, believe it or not, its funny you would mention that. Transocean, the drilling company, maintains a SWAT team and that's their sole purpose. They're experts in their field. The BOP, the blowout preventer, they call that subsea equipment. They have their own SWAT teams that they send out to the rigs to service and maintain that equipment.

Mark: Yeah but I'm talking about what are interior SWAT teams? What is that?

James: The interior, from the government now, I don't have an idea about that, that's beyond me. The other gentleman also mentioned the USGS that comes out and does the surveys. I've been on that particular rig for three years, offshore for five years, and I've seen a USGS one time. What we do have on a very regular basis is the MMS, which is the Minerals Management Service.

Mark: They're all under the interior department.

James: OK. Yes. As a matter of fact, we were commended for our inspection record from the MMS. We are actually receiving an award from them for the highest level of safety and environmental awareness.

Mark: Well, I thought you were going to receive that award. Didn't they put it on hold?

James: No, we have actually received that award. We received it last year. We may have been ready to receive it again this year.

[...]

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