{"id":1639,"date":"2010-06-04T14:31:35","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T18:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/?p=1639"},"modified":"2020-04-09T07:24:10","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T11:24:10","slug":"oil-spill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2010\/06\/04\/oil-spill\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil Spill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

multiplexer<\/a> has adequately captured my feelings on the matter of what Obama should do about the oil gusher. It amounts to \u201cso long as BP has the best experts and equipment, and appear to be working as hard as they can, let them run the site and support them with whatever they need.\u201d Also, \u201cprepare for an ungodly huge, multi-year cleanup.\u201d Some photo-ops of him frowning at murdered wildlife might help with the political fallout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Punishment for the guilty comes later. At some level, we\u2019re all culpable for this. You want to talk about true cost of your massive, inefficient vehicle? Take a look. Still, I would like to see at least some of BP\u2019s assets nationalized \u2013 and (ideally) someone do some prison time for this. BP externalized the risks \u2013 we need to re-internalize them. There\u2019s plenty of precedent for jailing foreigners who endanger American national interests without charge or trial. We\u2019ve been doing it for years. Some folks have even advocated torturing such people. I don\u2019t go that far \u2013 but I would like to see words like \u201cmanslaughter\u201d and \u201cnegligent homicide\u201d bandied about. Perhaps we could also work out a reasonable ratio \u2013 like \u2013 100 seagulls to one human life. Let\u2019s crank the importance of animals up from \u201czero.\u201d Multiplying even a large number by \u201czero value\u201d is somewhat frustrating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, since she covered the fun bit \u2013 I thought I would do some math: Operation \u201ccircumcise and install condom\u201d appears to be going okay on the oil gusher. Estimates put the raw flow rate of the leak between 5,000 and 60,000 barrels per day. They\u2019re currently capturing from the reservoir tip at a rate something like 1,000 barrels per day \u2013 so we\u2019re catching between 2% and 20% of the mess. Hooray for non-zero! There\u2019s also something about \u201cflaps,\u201d \u201chydrates,\u201d \u201cit\u2019s really freakin\u2019 hard to work at a mile below the surface.\u201d Anyway, right now we\u2019re between 2% and 20% of the way there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had no idea what those numbers meant, so I looked around for some online calculators. One barrel is 42 gallons. To get 5,000 * 42 = 210,000 gallons through a 10 inch pipe in 24 hours, you need to push 8,750 gallons through that pipe in an hour. That\u2019s a flow rate of 35 feet per minute, or about 0.4 miles per hour. The upper estimate is 12 times that \u2013 or 420 fpm, which is 4.8 mph. Either of those velocities seem eminently reasonable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

technolope<\/a> could probably tell me more about the sort of pressure differential required to push a fluid as viscus as crude oil out of a 10\u2033 hole, into water at 5,000 foot pressures at that rate. I would be interested in that math. technolope<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another fun number is that crude oil has fungibly traded at between $70 and $100 per barrel this year. That means that the gusher is gushing $350,000 to $6M per day in precious, precious crude. Don\u2019t think of it as an environmental disaster \u2013 think of it as cash washing up on the shore!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

multiplexer has adequately captured my feelings on the matter of what Obama should do about the oil gusher. It amounts to \u201cso long as BP has the best experts and equipment, and appear to be working as hard as they can, let them run the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,50,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bp-oil-spill","category-economics","category-real-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1640,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions\/1640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}