BP+Oil+Spill

= = For decades now oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico off the coasts of Texas, Lousiana, Mississippi and Alabama has been well established. Growing up in the coasts of Florida I was not exposed to this because Congress has made it law to ban drilling on the Atlantic Coast of the US as well anywhere off the coast of Florida.
 * Oil Drilling: Tapping into the Gulf of Mexico's Resources**



__The Deepwater Horizon Rig: The Rig, The Explosion, The Spill__ Facts: There are approxiately 4,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico This rig was positioned approximately 50 miles SE of the the Mississippi River above the massive Tiber Oil Field that contains an amount of oil that BP will not disclose The rig was built in 2001 and cost $350 million to build BP leased the rig for Transocean for a cost that breaks down to nearly $500,000 per day This rig is categorized as semi-submersible and holds itself steady with giant thrusters. The ocean floor at this location was approximately 5,000 ft deep This is the deepest oil well in the world. The oil field is called the Tiber oilfield and is located in the Mississippi Canyon. BP had finished drilling the well but had yet to begin producing oil from this site when the incident occurred The distance from the ocean floor to the oil in earth's crust is approixmately 25,000 ft Working 24hrs a day, it takes approxiately 90 days to drill 25,000 ft into the ocean floor One-hundred and twenty six people were occupying the rig at the time of the explosion Eleven workers are still missing

April 20th, 2010 at 10:00pm: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig suffers a massive explosion assumably killing 11 crew members. All remaining 115 crew members are able to successfully evacuate and survive. The rig continues to burn day and night for 2 days. April 22nd, 2010 The Deepwater Horizon began sinking to the bottom of the ocean and came to rest on the northwest side of well. Oil began spewing from the cracked...

April 23rd, 2010 Much of the media's focus for several days was on finding the missing crew members. After 3 days of finding nothing the U.S. Coast Guard Station in New Orleans suspends the search at 5:00pm CST.

On April 29th, 2010 I first presented my knowledge and potential problems involved with this oil spill. At that time the well was still flowing uncontrollably and NOAA projected that the spill spread in an area approximately 60 x 60 miles wide. It was reasons into why the well could not be capped was still being investigated. Mulitple news sources began comparing this problem to the Exxon Valdeez from the 1990s.

On April 30th, 2010 the New York Times has now reported the issue as "one of the world's worst oil spills."

May 3rd CNN reports that BP has accepted repsonsibility for the oil spill. CBSNew.com reports that Attorney General Troy King orders BP to stop offering coastal residents of Alabama a $5,000 settlement in leiu of suing the company.

May 8th Small balls of tar wash ashore on Dauphin Island, Alabama.

May 9th Alabama Officials deploy massive oil booms to block oil from entering Mobile Bay.

May 10th A 48 ton, 4 story high containment dome is shipped out to site and is lowered onto the gushing pipe. The warmer oil mixes with too much cold ocean water and forms ice crystals clogging the head of the dome. BP officials set this dome aside and begin working on a smaller version that decreases the chance of crystal formation by allowing less water in. Officials also admit that the smaller dome will not be as effective in collecting as much oil as the original was designed for.

May 11th NOAA updates its spill map. This is different from pervious maps because they now indicating the relative concentrations and sites where oil has touched land.

AL.com quotes officials who say the spill has reached the 4 million gallon mark. The 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster that occured in Alaska's Prince William Sound was just under 11 million gallons.

Governor Bob Riley orders "ocean grade" booms (3 times bigger) be installed at the mouth of the Mobile Bay after strong currents break through those installed just a few days ago.

May 12th NOAA closes down more federal waters (3 miles and beyond the coast).

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano visits Alabama for a third time and said BP is responsible. She reports that of 13,000 people, 430 vessels, 430,000 gallons of disperstant, and 1.4 million feet of booms are being used in the clean-up effort. This translates into over 265 miles of boom.

Foxnews.com reports today that in a hearing on April 20th, 2010 that BP was aware "that there were problems with the blowout preventers before the accident and confusion almost right up to the time of the explosion over the success of the cementing process" which was conducted Transocean Ltd, Halliburton, and Cameron Inc. Birds

Sea Turtles May 3rd - 23 dead sea turtles wash-up on Mississippi beaches (LATimes.com)

May 22nd 2010 Multiple media sources are referencing two professors, Steve Wereley of Perdue University and Ian MacDonald of Florida State University, who have both published seperate reports that the volume of uncontrolled spill is much greater than 5,000 barrels per day that BP has initially reported. Both claim that the volume is really more like 50,000 to 100,000 barrels per day. Each barrel is 55 gallons. The entire Exxon Valdez spill was 14 million gallons. If this spill really is 50,000 barrels per day, after how many days would this spill take to reach the size of the Valdez? This spill has been ongoing for 34 days now. Again if the 50,000 barrel/day estimate is correct how many times greater is this spill than that of the Valdez?