Now it gets Interesting

Now it gets interesting...

Officials discovered that gas hydrates, ice-like crystals lighter than water, had built up inside the 100-ton metal container. The hydrates were beginning to make the dome buoyant, and they also plugged up the top of the dome,  preventing it from being effective.

“I wouldn’t say it has failed yet,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, said at a news conference in Robert, La. “What we attempted to do last night hasn’t worked.”

As a consequence, crews had to lift the dome off the well and place it on the seabed."

What BP is not telling us is whether the hydrate in question is merely a  Gas Hydrate, or it's volatle variant, Burning Ice (both can cause  the coffer dam to levitate), as Methane Hydrates are not stable when pressure is released or if the temperature goes above freezing, conditions which will not hold when hot oil fills up the cofferdam, thus releasing the methane from the water lattice of the hydrate. As seen in the map below, MH appears to be the answer. If so, as the saying goes, now it gets interesting.

 Click here to get a take on BP.  Interesting to say the least. Last but not least, methane hydrate caused the blast in the firs place. To quote Physorg.com...

"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 Spill may be much worse then reported. :(


It is. According to scientists, the spill is more like 70,000 barrels a day, which means, in less then 4 days, more oil is going into the gulf then the 250,000 barrels dumped from the Exxon-Valdez. 


Last but not least, the bastards at BP have no shame...


"If the experts' estimates are closer to the mark, that would be raised that to nearly three million gallons a day.

BP has estimated that there are at least 50 million barrels of oil in the undersea reservoir that is gushing into the Gulf, according to The New York Times.

BP chief executive Tony Hayward, meanwhile, played down the size of the spill, saying it was "tiny" when compared to the expanse of water it was pouring into.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," BP chief executive Tony Hayward told British daily The Guardian."

It goes beyond words the anger and helplessness one feels in a disaster which, if unchecked, could be an extinction level event even though, it's a very big ocean...