You seem to be assuming it is "natural seepage".
The difference in spills versus "seepage" is concentration. I would wager that it is far more likely to be the result of a spill than seepage.
Seepage according to what I have read simply leaves a very very very thin film on the top of the ocean that is next to undetectable.
Not quite the recipe for tar balls, is it?
If that were the case where are the historical accounts of tar balls on beaches before we started drilling offshore?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarball_(oil)
A tarball is a blob of petroleum which has been weathered after floating in the ocean. Tarballs are an aquatic pollutant in most environments, although they can occur naturally and as such are not always associated with oil spills.
A tar ball from Moss Landing State Beach in California in 2007, probably from natural seepage.
Natural Offshore Oil Seepage and Related Tarball Ac ulation on the California Coastline—Santa Barbara Channel and the Southern Santa Maria Basin; Source Identification and Inventory
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1225/
What's funny about all this is that the natural seepage would probably be eliminated or reduced if we could relieve the pressure by drilling!
Thanks!
Fascinating. I learned something from reading it. Natural seepage does indeed produce tarballs.
Reasonable conclusion, if not supported by data that I have yet seen. A good chunk of oil remains even in "tapped" sources, simply because it isn't economical or even technologically feasible to get it all.
Perhaps, although the ground seeps I have personally witnessed are not so much gushing as they are oozing.
You have to wonder why these Natural Offshore Oil Seepage's show up after oil spills…
Nah, that looks like oil from a spill (or leak).You have to wonder why these Natural Offshore Oil Seepage's show up after oil spills…
This is what you claimed, with nothing to back it up.
Nothing to back it up…
You need to get out once in a while…
In the latest iteration of its plan, revealed Sunday in a letter sent to U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson, BP said it expects to have the capacity to capture between 40,000 and 53,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of June. That compares with the 15,000 barrels a day that are being collected now, out of the 20,000 to 40,000 barrels that a team of scientists estimates as the daily flow rate from the Macondo well.
BP, which said that further enhancements will increase the collection capacity to as high as 80,000 barrels a day by mid-July, submitted its latest plan after Watson, the federal government's second-in-command for the spill response, told the company Friday its previous plan didn't meet the bill and gave BP a 48-hour deadline to come up with a revised scheme.
Wait! There's More!
WEDNESDAY 16 JUNE 2010
EXCLUSIVE: New Do ents, Employees Reveal BP's Alaska Oilfield Plagued by Major Safety Issues
Tuesday 15 June 2010
by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report
Nearly 5,000 miles from the oil-spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, BP and its culture of cost-cutting are contributing to another environmental mess.
According to internal BP do ents obtained by Truthout, and after interviewing more than a dozen employees over the past month, the Prudhoe Bay oil field, in a remote corner of North America on Alaska's north shore, is in danger.
After two serious oil spills and other mishaps, the BP employees fingered a long list of safety issues that have not been adequately addressed, making the Prudhoe Bay oilfield vulnerable to a devastating accident that potentially could rival the havoc in the Gulf.
"The condition of the [Prudhoe Bay] field is a lot worse and in my opinion a lot more dangerous," said Marc Kovac, who has worked for BP on Alaska's North Slope for more than three decades. "We still have hundreds of miles of rotting pipe ready to break that needs to be replaced. We are totally unprepared for a large spill."
Kovac, a mechanic and welder who is the steward of the United Steelworkers union local 4959, said a lot of employees share his feelings, but "don't want to risk their jobs for speaking out." Kovac said he was willing to take the risk because BP has been slow to deal with the Prudhoe Bay problems and that "many lives are at stake."
Some of the employees, speaking anonymously, said BP follows an "operate to failure" at ude.
Kovac said that means BP Alaska avoids spending money on "upkeep" and instead runs the equipment until it breaks down.
http://www.truth-out.org/do ents-e...ues60470?print
Any legitimate news sources cover this? Doesn't Truth Out tend to get disgruntled employees that lie?
Marc Kovac is the only source for all these stories up there. He is the union steward. Be a big feather in his cap if he could get more safety checkers hired. I find it ironic. They find problems during preventative maintenance, things working just like they should, and he cries. I doubt his concerns are valid. There seem to be two incidents that were normal, and only one that I found where a BP engineer authorized temporary operation of a problem well that went bad on 8/16/02.
This is a risky job to begin with. Unions are one thing, but to be a union pussie...
Get real.
I'm not going to sift though several links. Have any particular quotes of interest? If you recall, I do hold BP responsible for this. I just don't see the merit of Kovac's claims being only seen on five progressive links when I searched.
If you allow bull mixed in with the real problems, then some will stop believing BP has any direct fault. Can we stick with what can be verified?
Can it be verified that B.P. negligently failed to install a less than million dollar emergency cut-off valve to save money that would have likely avoided this catastrophe?
Again, I hold BP responsible for this leak. I'll bet yes, it can be verified they didn't install it. However, that wasn't their negligence. It simply left them with one less way to combat the problem. The negligence was rushing to get the oil flowing, and the normal skipped steps along the way.
..the acoustic switch isn't required in the U.S. but if your digging 18K feet into sea bed near well known methane gas deposits...you would think that a corporation with any conscious would want that extra layer of safety given the marginal costs....
Wash PostA senior House Democrat said that the blowout preventer that failed to stop an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system, a “useless” test version of one of the devices that was supposed to close the flow of oil and a cutting tool that wasn’t strong enough to shear through joints that made up 10 percent of the drill pipe.
That's what the Interior Department's MMS inspections would have discovered before the spill...had they been conducted.
ONCE AGAIN....they were not required and while your bringing up 'failed safety inspections' why don't you post about how the Bush Administration under Cheney loosened safety and inspection regulations while deep-water rig safety grew more precarious...
The ing "Christians", and Left Behinders wanted Armageddon? Well, here's what it might look like:
Oil Spill Forces Animals To Flee To Shallow Water Off Coast, Scientists Warn Of 'Mass Die-Off'
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0...tml?view=print
Reich says put PB America into receivership. I say seize all their assets and bank accounts.
The testimony from Saucier established that the government agency he works for doesn’t do any certification of blowout preventers, the massive devices that are supposed to be the final cut off of an out-of-control well. Saucier said most of the action MMS has taken to control blowout preventers has been through “notices to lessees,” letters that go to drill operators but are not enforceable.
“We have self-certification of critical equipment and safety notices that are not enforceable…” Nguyen said, digesting the testimony before tailing off, pursing his lips and moving on to his next question.
The panel of three Coast Guard officials and three MMS representatives also appeared disappointed to learn from Saucier that tighter rules for monitoring deepwater drilling safety systems were proposed nine years ago, but got lost in the shuffle and never were adopted.
Saucier said new rules were written in 2001 to require secondary control systems for blowout preventers, the stacks of valves and pistons on the seafloor that are supposed to shut a well in an emergency, but MMS higher-ups in Washington never approved the regulations.
“As far as I know, they’re still up in headquarters,” he said.
Actually if you read the entire article, it draws on multiple sources, including line employees, managers, executives, outside investigators, and open source Alaskan state government do ents. Seems fairly well researched and thorough.
BP has had some bad problems with the operations up there, you may remember the issue of "pigging" the lines and corrosion at the time of the spill in 2006.
This article seems to paint a fairly consistant picture of safety lapses.
B.P. problems on the North Slope..
* September 29, 2008 an 8 inch high pressure gas line at the Y-Pad location “separated” sending 3 pieces of pipe to the tundra. One segment of the pipe landed 900 feet from the pipeline. Roughly 30 minutes later a second and unrelated incident occurred on the S Pad where there was a gas release.
* January 15, 2009 a isc cleaning pig became lodged and lost in a 34 inch Oil Transit Line during de-oiling allowing gas to pass around the pig and travel through Skid 50, to Pump Station 1 causing a significant venting of gas to the atmosphere and the complete shutdown of the Trans Alaska Pipeline for a period of time.
* October 10, 2009 at the Central Compressor Plant low pressure flare staging valves were stuck closed causing gas to travel to the backup low pressure flare valves, which activated causing the gas to vent to the atmosphere which could have caused an explosion.
* November 29, 2009 an 18 inch three-phase common line near the Lisburne Production Center carrying a mixture of crude oil, produced water and natural gas ruptured spraying its contents over an estimated 8,400 square feet area.
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