Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf, decreasing oxygen levels by 30% | Hacker News Reader

Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf, decreasing oxygen levels by 30%

nytimes.com

27 pointsmetamemetics47 comments

interesting how the whole Repub Party message of "free market is good, regulation is bad" sounds in the context of this giant oil spill disaster. hopefully this classic example of Tragedy of the Commons wakes some more people up.

I heard the BP gave a lot of money to Obama.

Maybe it have something to do with Obama wants to stop drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. I mean, this is like the first oil spill in the gulf of Mexico?

Beside, isn't a whole lot of stuff got tested by Underwriter laboratory and lot of regulations and standard were simply copied from Underwriter Laboratory guidelines? This company been around for more than 200 years. Maybe private regulations have some merit. (coupled with consumer lawsuits to hold private regulatory agencies accountable)

P.S. I think one of the argument has been proposed against government regulations is that when the regulators failed, they get more money so they can do their "job" better. Another argument is that people trust government too much, so it should be left to private institutions because private institutions are trusted less thus get more scrutiny.

I guess spreading rumors about politicians isn't exactly socially approved around here, neither do deflecting the questions.

But on the other hand, I still think the whole issue is that fisheries are not exactly owned by fishermen, thus the whole lack of lawsuit threats against oilmen for polluting their properties. This mean we have a tragedy of the common in the ocean. (Overfishing issues could properly get resolved too, but how do you own schools of fish?)

Regardless, BP will have to pay a big cleanup bill when this is all over. It's a disincentive in itself.

Also, isn't there's a danger of regulators being brought off? Fishermen don't have much of incentive to ruin their livelhood by accepting bride from oilmen. So maybe they'll be able to agree on inspectors agreed upon by oilmen and fishermen. It won't eliminate the whole issue of bridling probably, must probably raise the price of corruption higher?

Or, you could take a less polarized stance and realize that the regulation in this case failed miserably as well:

AP IMPACT: Fed'l inspections on rig not as claimed http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100516/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_...

There's enough blame to go around, all things considered.

As much as I am upset at BP, I think the American consumer needs to pay too. We need to tax gas to incentivize people to buy more efficient vehicles and fund alternate energy. Yes, windmills are expensive.

We need to tax PC's to incentive people to buy macs. Yes, macs are expensive.

Agreed. Banning drilling in U.S. waters will likely only move it to even less regulated areas of the world. We need a focused, determined effort to wean ourselves from petrochemical fuels.

I don't think there are a lot of areas in the world that can be drilled with current technology that have yet to be exploited.

I'm certainly not an expert but from what I understand there are active ocean wells all over the world: http://www.offshore-mag.com/index/regional-reports.html

Agreed. And I like the jokes going around about alternative energy, the ones like, "You heard about the huge wind farm disaster? Yeah apparently it's caused a gentle breeze." and "You heard about the big disaster at the solar panel farm? Yeah apparently it's caused an annoying glare." Etc.

Wind farms actually lead to a lot of bird deaths, similar to the way skyscrapers do. It's no giant underwater oil spill, but alternative energy is not all roses and sunshine.

How about: "You hear the one about the people who thought they could maintain a first world standard of living while replacing cheap means of energy production with happy thoughts and butterfly power"?

False dilemma, most of the first world actually has a great standard of living without ubiquitous gas guzzlers, AC, tumble-dryers and whatnot. Some even argue that energy efficiency can be improved by a factor of five: http://ernst.weizsaecker.de/?p=889&language=en

Before you tax oil, maybe you should list out the possible unintended consequences of taxing oils and funding alternative energy?

Your proposal sound great on the surface but I am afraid that there might be a little sinister unforeseen consequences bubbling beneath. We shouldn't stop at the obvious benefit, but also explore the not-so-obvious consequences.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html

Gas was already expensive a few years ago. The consequences were GM was screwed because they sold big cars. People will buy more fuel efficient cars as gas gets more expensive. That is already proven. We could also fund mass transit with the gas tax. We don't need a large tax. Start of with 25 cents and let's take it from there.

Yeah, sinister unforeseen consequences like the free market choosing the most effective and efficient energy sources. Oil has a lot of externalities that shift many of the the costs of using it as a fuel to others. A free market cannot work correctly under those circumstances.

Tax it enough to make up for those shifted costs, and you won't need to specifically fund alternative energy, as the free market will do that for us.

How about I do this for you:

It raise the cost of fertilizer, plastics, lubricants, paints and other items essential to the modern economy.

It is also not necessary true that we will found a suitable or superior alternatives for each and every use of oils.(Which is a lot by the way)

P.S. I realized that the OP was talking about a limited tax on gas. But even so, people can just switch to disel and disel engines?

I don't understand what makes fixing the leak so difficult. Could someone explain it to me? I genuinely want to know this.

Agreed. I do find it hard to believe that an industry which has been drilling oil in the ocean for decades and has been making billions of dollars in profits is somehow unable to figure out a reliable way of preventing this from happening, or least reliably preventing it from spreading once it does. Ultimately, it's oil leaking into water -- to an engineer's mind, it doesn't seem like rocket science to prevent it from happening and/or dampening it's effects by 90% or more. A thumbnail solution I can imagine involves, oh, I dunno, say a barrier of some kind, either already in place or that can be rapidly put into place in the first few days after the spill starts. In what universe of competent people (with decades and billions under their belt) could it go several weeks in the state it's been? Smells like gross incompetence and/or greed combined with disdain for their fellow citizens.

A thumbnail solution I can imagine involves, oh, I dunno, say a barrier of some kind, either already in place

There was one, namely the blowout preventer. It failed

or that can be rapidly put into place in the first few days after the spill starts.

That's much easier said than done when you're talking about oil coming out at high pressure, and uneven topography all at a depth of 1 mile under the ocean.

> uneven topography all at a depth of 1 mile under the ocean.

How was this stuff built up in the first place? (honest question)

Millions of years of seismic activity, sediment deposition, and high pressures.

... forms pipelines under rocks?

Sorry, since you quoted my line about the topography, I thought that's what you were asking about.

The pipeline is formed by drilling long holes (using bentonite slurry to keep the hole from collapsing on itself), building a long pipeline use threaded or welded segments, and slipping the pipe down the whole. It's like well digging, but on a much larger scale.

You're asking about how did they manage to build the platform, lay the pipes, drill, put everything into place, etc., right? That's a good question. It seems like they spent a lot of time and money figuring how to get the oil flowing. The question is, did they also spend enough time/money addressing how to prevent and react to failure scenarios?

It's a well known principle that, given a brief problem description, the less a software engineer knows about the problem domain, the easier they will judge the solution to be.

funny! :)

however, being a software engineer doesn't preclude one from being right or having useful insight within any other realm of human activity.

It's a general rule about most people. Almost all problems look simple from 5000 feet up; it's only when you try and work out the details and get it actually working that the difficulty becomes obvious.

Yep but it's another general rule that many problems look insurmountable when there has been insufficient analysis, brainstorming, experimentation, testing, and time/energy/money spent on trying to solve that problem. I for one have gotten the impression from this BP incident, and from everything I've read, that that is what happened in this case. There was even an interview with a so-called expert who helped work on the Exxon Valdez cleanup who said he's been shocked at how little has changed since then in terms of advancement in technology, process, etc.

Agree it's easier said than done. But there's a class of problems I find real hard to believe cannot be solved/addressed when one has had decades and billions to work on it, ahead of time, and when the same species has been able to design computers, spaceships, skyscrapers, etc.

The species has built a lot of computers that didn't work, spaceships that blew up, and skyscrapers that have fallen down.

From my understanding (I think we all know what it means if somebody on the internet says 'my understanding'):

There is a giant pipe connecting to regions with liquids in them. Liquid flows from region to the other because that is what nature says it will do. The way you stop the leak is by closing that pipe, without creating any other holes connecting the regions. This pipe did have a shutoff valve for exactly this situation, but it failed and will not activate. So basically your option is to squeeze the steel pipe shut, and hopefully this doesn't weak the pipe causing it to break. Also, apparently the pipe is mostly covered by rock, so somehow you have to work around that.

I'm sure we've all tried to stop the water from coming out of the garden hose by putting a kink in the hose. It's like that, except now you can't reach the hose because it's under lots of rock, and really far under water. You could put your thumb over the top, but there is too much pressure.

There's also the issue of the leak being under 5000 feet of water. The deepest-diving military submarines can only go down to about 2000 feet; any more than that, and you need specialized deep submergence vehicles. Very few of these can dive to 5000 feet; those that can are usually oceanographic research vessels that can't carry the payloads needed to repair things. And you can forget about sending a human out in a diving suit; the pressure (or more specifically, the decompression process) would kill them.

No, it is the pressure that would kill a human before decompression ever became a factor. Below ~2000ft, even hydrogen/helium/oxygen breathing gas mixes become so dense and viscous that human lungs aren't strong enough to breathe properly.

http://www.us.elsevierhealth.com/product.jsp?sid=&isbn=9...

"those that can are usually oceanographic research vessels that can't carry the payloads needed to repair things"

I don't see why they'd need to carry the payload in/on the vessels. Couldn't the payload be dropped or lowered from above?

Depends how much finessing it needs. Say they went with the "drop a big dome over it" idea that's been suggested. The sea floor is uneven; if they want the solution to last they need a tight seal that can withstand significant pressure. I don't know the dynamics of underwater concrete jobs, but I'd imagine you can't just pump concrete down the sides of the dome and hope that it ends up in the right place.

Actually, there are almost no deep diving submersibles left in service. They have been almost completely replaced by tethered "robots" (actually remote controlled vehicles) in scientific and industrial (oil, pipeline, and cables) use because they are much cheaper and can do all the observation and light collection that submersibles used to do. Unfortunately, they are also less flexible.

There is a shutoff valve at the bottom of the sea, another valve on the drilling rig at the sea surface, and a pipe connecting them.

The way you close off a well is by a) closing either of the valves or b) pumping a few tons of sand and cement down the pipe to block the drilling hole.

Here the top valve failed (with the first explosion) and the bottom valve doesn't work. The pipe broke when the platform sank, and without a connection to the drilling hole the well can't be blocked in the normal fashion. Plus it's too deep underwater for divers or normal submarines.

Without a connection to the well or a working valve, you're basically screwed.

The only certain way to stop the leak at this stage is to drill a new hole at an angle to the first one, a relief well, then you have a connection you can use to pump in the sand and cement to block the well beneath the sea bottom. They have started the process of doing that, the only problem is that it will take months.

Fixes that are known to work in shallower water, like the dome to contain the spill so it could be pumped up, didn't work here - it got clogged up by deep water crystals.

Drilling at these depths is still largely experimental, so there's not much prior experience to draw on.

Maybe they will find a solution at some point, but besides drilling the relief well no fix is know at this time - it's basically trial and error.

I want to start or join an effort to come up with solutions and processes to help ensure this kind of spill never happens again. Or at least, is never again allowed to get this bad. Perfection may be impossible, but I'm confident we collectively have the brainpower, creativity, money and engineering/science knowledge to make a dramatic improvement. Does anyone know of any existing projects, grassroots or otherwise? I did some Googling but no luck so far. Ideally we'd take the best ideas from a variety of sources, draw on smart folks from various fields, and the ultimate deliverable is a recommendation of a set of tested processes and gadgets and a plan for fighting this. Ideally any money required is drawn from the oil industry, directly or indirectly, but if instead it comes from non-profit organizations or philanthropists, so be it.

Glad I don't own BP stock

Unfortunately, we all own stock in the US.

(speaking for HN readers who are US citizens)

You don't have to be a US citizen to have a vested interest in the US economy. America is an elephant. When an elephant collapses and dies, the whole jungle feels the impact and smells the rotting stench.

Ditto. We're too interconnected to just not have a rotting stench. More like a keystone specie die, everybody else die.

No, not die. Simply regress from developing to 3rd or 4th world status.

BP should pay for the damage caused by the spill, including the cleanup efforts, no?

Agreed. But even if their total bill comes out to say $10 billion, it can come out of their profits earned from only the last 1-3 quarters. Since those profits already came from us, arguably, we the consumers of BP's product have prepayed for the cost of this disaster. In one sense, BP is not going to pay anything.

Plus, due to the nature of the incident, it is unlikely that the true "total cost" is going to be charged to BP. How do you come up with a dollar figure for the total short and long term impact to the environment and economy? Very hard to measure, at best you can only estimate.

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