The worst environmental catastrophe in human history has started.

[ehorn]

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[ehorn]

...Researchers aboard the F.G. Walton Smith vessel briefed reporters on a two-week cruise in which they traced an underwater oil plum 15 miles wide, 3 miles long and about 600 feet thick. The plume's core is 1,100 to 1,300 meters below the surface, they said.

"It's an infusion of oil and gas unlike anything else that has ever been seen anywhere, certainly in human history," said Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia, the expedition leader....

 

[ehorn]

Reports are starting to be leaked of pressures and flow rates off the chart hours before the incident occurred, and (if true) they were MUCH greater than modern equipment could bear (proper safety or not)...

BP went and fucked up BIG TIME poking deep holes into the mantle without the capacity to tame them... dam thing is looking more and more like a volcano. I would not be surprised to see that cap fail and blow out too.

 

[killthesunshine]

VIDEO: High-Res Footage of Ongoing BP Oil Leak

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/BP-BP-Oil-Oil-Leak,news-7027.html

 

[ehorn]

Multi-cam views: http://bp.isevil.org/

 

[ehorn]

No doubt in my mind the casing is shot...

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[CaptainObvious]

Quote from ehorn:

No doubt in my mind the casing is shot...

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You are correct. This analogy taken from a story posted in another thread gives a simple, but appropriate explanation of what's happening.

It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?...it doesn't leak so bad, you close the nozzle?...it leaks real bad, same dynamics. It is why they sawed the riser off...or tried to anyway...but they clipped it off, to relieve pressure on the leaks "down hole".

 

[ehorn]

"...We're going to have to evacuate the gulf states..."

"...it could go upwards of 100,000 barrels per day..."

"a maximum case discharge of 162,000 barrels per day was estimated."

 

[tmarket]

Quote from ehorn:

"...We're going to have to evacuate the gulf states..."

"...it could go upwards of 100,000 barrels per day..."

"a maximum case discharge of 162,000 barrels per day was estimated."

But Tadeusz Patzek, a professor who is the chairman of the department of petroleum and geosystems engineering at the University of Texas, argues that the discussion has been hijacked by people who don't know what they're talking about.

"There is a lot of fast talk, which has little relation sometimes to reality," Patzek said. "And there is jumping to conclusions by the people who have no right to jump to any conclusions because they don't know."

Today the official government estimate of the flow, based on multiple techniques that include subsea video and satellite surveys of the oil sick on the surface, is 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day.

In effect, what BP considered the worst-case scenario in early May is in late June the bitter reality -- call it the new normal -- of the gulf blowout.

 

[auspiv]

Quote from ehorn:

"...We're going to have to evacuate the gulf states..."

"...it could go upwards of 100,000 barrels per day..."

"a maximum case discharge of 162,000 barrels per day was estimated."

If you had read the actual report, you would've noticed that 100,000 bbl/d scenario is only if they REMOVE the BOP, which they have absolutely no intention of doing.