Thanks Jim.

Nice catch cbl.

What is the provenance for this video?

caught a minute of KO last night where the guest sadly made an anecdotal, but convincing case that casing is gone, floor is ruptured. then again, same guest sounded like he was advocating deploying a “small nuke” to plug hellmouth. will see if anything’s up on KO’s site

others have surmised that the casing is gone.

via the perceptive IOZ, honorary Firepup!

Thanks for the video, CBL2 and Jim. Doesn’t this just verify Senator Nelson’s earlier warning?

Yesterday, Senator Bill Nelson told MSNBC that he’s investigating reports of oil seeping up from additional leak points on the seafloor:

Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL): Andrea we’re looking into something new right now, that there’s reports of oil that’s seeping up from the seabed… which would indicate, if that’s true, that the well casing itself is actually pierced… underneath the seabed. So, you know, the problems could be just enormous with what we’re facing.

Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC: Now let me understand better what you’re saying. If that is true that it is coming up form that seabed, even the relief well won’t be the final solution to cap this thing. That means that we’ve got oil gushing up at disparate places along the ocean floor.

Hopefully this is just a mid-casing rupture and the leaks are from side-pressure. If that is the case, then a bottom kill will likely stop these as well as the well itself.

If, on the other hand, this is a rock cap fracture, a bottom kill won’t help.

I’ve spoken with some engineers on the subject, and many feel that the rock cap is intact at this point, and that these are side-leaks from the casing that are seeping up through the sea floor, and that they will stop leaking once the bottom kill is performed.

I sincerely hope the engineers I’ve talked to are correct.

Casing probably is cracked, but it’s subsurface.
What you may (or may not) be seeing depends on the exact location of whatever damage the casing has taken.

Also, there’s a thousand feet of mud above the top level of rocks, so you aren’t going to see cracks in the sea floor, any more than you could see cracks in chocolate pudding.

All is STILL not yet lost. If the casing is damaged, it depends on where it is damaged. So long as the relief wells can tap in below the damage (but above the reservoir) then it can still be dealt with via standard means.

If the relief wells cannot do the fix, then a Russian-style small nuke closure of the well may be the only thing left to do. I’ll take that over simply throwing up hands and kissing off the Gulf, the Carribean, the eastern seaboard, and the greater Atlantic.

You aren’t talking big nuke, just a few kilotons. Buried deep. The Russians (in old Soviet Union) did it like 5 times (or six…) with one attempt not working.

Richard Bruce Cheney and George Walker Bush: the gifts that keep on giving.

You aren’t talking big nuke, just a few kilotons. Buried deep. The Russians (in old Soviet Union) did it like 5 times (or six…) with one attempt not working.

The Russians did it on land not a mile deep in the ocean. On land where, I would remind you, there is no chance of a tsunami whatsoever. But then maybe we could evacuate Louisiana, Florida and the rest of the republican states around the gulf. At least we do not have to worry about the small brown folks in Mexico as they are all illegal anyway. A fuckin’ nuke, are you nuts!

I thought the Russians used the nukes to put out oil well fires on land. No?

Thanks Jim and CBL.

If the relief well does not work, a nuke is the only option left to save the Gulf and beyond.

Well, the slow motion disaster continues. There might come a point when deploying a nuke to stop the destruction of the gulf ecomes a viable option. If that time comes, do not make reflexive remarks about nuclear weapons. If their really is no other way to stop the oil pouring into the gulf, then I say just do it. If this oil is under so much pressure that it continues pouring out over 5K feet down then what can we do to stop it? If these leaks become a lot worse what other choice would there be? Would you have that entire pool pour into the gulf? Wouldn’t that kill the entire gulf? And finally, what would you have Obama do? He is pretty much hamstrung by the laws that big oil got the rethug congress to pass back when they were in charge. Its big oils resonsibility. Its PBs fault. And yet…the rethugs are putting out the meme that its all Obamas fault. And of course that ol rethug bugabear the “liberal MSM” can’t wait to push that meme. I expect the networks and of course te sheeple to be uttering that every day-the oil “leak” is all Obamas fault.
So, are you all planning to “punish” the democrats in 2010 by sitting on your hands or by pushing pure-but unelectable-candidates? Will you just kind of passivly stand by while the rethugs take control again? From what I have been reading here lately I would not be surprised if you follow any or all of those choices. By getting Stupek to retire you have given his seat to the rethugs. Just because he won no matter what the rethugs did does not mean that any other democrat will win. We are talking Michigans UP, home to the uber conservative. Who elected Stupek because of who he was not because of what he was.

More evidence of serious problems much earlier than the blowout.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/06/did-bp-oil-well-blow-out-in-february.html

We will not use a nuclear explosion to address the problem. It would be political suicide both in the U.S. and abroad. It’s not on the table.

Actually, it probably is lost. This is just damage control.

Here’s a sobering view from someone with industry experience:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967

He makes a very persuasive argument that not all is as it seems. The casing has been breached and its been known for some time.

I hope you’re right, but can you expand on why you’re saying that?

12/21/12

wurk faster left behinders

jus sayin’

Boy we can fix anything we break because we are so exceptionally American smart there is nothing Nature could dominate in the end./s

The oil’s in the earth for more than FUVs and heating Mc Mansions and if we are going to figure out how to get along after the last drop is extracted we can change before the last drop if we get another chance.

If you want to talk nukes then the one thing worse than underestimating their power is overestimating their power.

Reality: As powerful as even a small nuke is it will not generate a tsunami if detonated in the rock… or even if detonated on the seafloor as far as the well is from shore.

It could fail to close the well or even fracture the weakened rock holding the reservoir and that would make things much worse much quicker… but no tsunami.

What would BP call the nuke solution? The Big Pang? The Bomb Putz? The Poop Nuke? Atom Angst?

Overkill

This is month-old reality. Your leaders and BP know the entire sad truth, but they’re not telling you. This is the doomsday scenario. They cannot stop it from growing and blowing out all the way. They aren’t even trying.

Tony’s Tuffie?

Let’s just let the free market solve this situation.

What do the latitude and longitude numbers in the video mean?

N 104311631 and
E 12028252

are not degrees, minutes, seconds, nor degrees (they can’t go over 180.xxxx)…

Help?

What the fuck are you going on about?

By kneeling and kissing corporate ass in a desperate attempt to prove that they are not “liberals” the D.C. dems deserve every bit of hell they’re going to catch from the populace.

And even now nobody much likes the republicans… not even the republicans.

Take your “Toe the corporate line or else!” routine elsewhere.

Then you believe 1.5 billion barrels in the reserve if emptied into the Gulf would be manageable in the end rather then the end.

As to my comment #20 the nuke we believe may be the answer may not be.

The earth may have been a living organism rather the a cold rock and we may have mortally wounded her, only time will tell. With brains like the bp boss, who knows how to cash a check but little else, running the response i have little hope, in fact none at this point.

The Bomb Putsch…I meant.

BP has huge contracts with the Pentagon ($2B for fuel deliveries, for instance, coming from tax payers – showing that the $20B “escrow” fund is just a tiny fraction of what’s needed.) We can’t let BP America shelter the parent company in London.

Jane has a new post available: The Freedom to Say What You Mean, and Fight for What You Believe

Sigh, its amazing what a little knowledge can do. So what engineer or scientist have you on your little panel of one that thinks using a nuke on top of a potential 4 billion barrel reservoir system is a good idea? Ever think maybe the top just collapses and the whole thing gets released at once?

How about we try consulting some scientists, a lot of them, not employed by BP or chained to a political platform to find out what the risks are before we go all DR STRANGE GLOVE on their asses..

Obama can have people disappeared with no oversight by anyone. He’s not lacking in power, and we know by experience, doesn’t give a crap about the laws expect as they apply to the little people.

If the Democrats put forth the best candidate, I’ll vote for them. I didn’t fall for that “unelectable” bs in 2008 and have never regretted not voting for Obama. If that really concerns you I suggest you up your standards. Heck my 80 year old grandmother a life long Dem when asked about why her medicare has been cut says its to line the pockets of Obama’s cronies.. and she’s right.

Please explain?: How exactly is the Russian use of nuclear explosive devices to stop an out-of-control oil well fire in air at ground level an emulatable model for staunching an extremely high pressure flow of oil and gas in an eroding well bore and surrounding soils, in a 1000′ layer of oceanbed mud under 5000′ of seawater?

Difficult to imagine two problems more different than these two.

Why doesn’t Obamarhamadingdong get his lazy arse down there and spackle the damn cracks!11! Y’all are right…he does hate me and everything I hold dear, and would sell his own daughters for a few bucks from Goldman Sachs, that is if he isn’t too busy spying on me too since he hates the Constitution too!!one!1! (BBzzzzzzztT…POP!)

That’s NOT the gulf.

It’s 10 deg N and 120 deg E, which is somewhere close to the Philippines.

All longitudes in the US are West or negative from the Greenwich meridian.

People, look at the numbers, understand what the instruments are telling us, or you become a victim to manipulation and BS.

I’m trying to sort that out also, to try to determine how far away from the well head this video was taken. From NOAA maps the well should be between 28 and 29 degrees North by between 88 and 89 degrees West. As you say, those numbers in the BP display don’t match the regular map system. If you look at current ROV’s monitoring the well head, similar strange coordinates are use; I just got E 1202798.08 by N 1043161.32 for one video. Since we don’t know the system being used, though, we can’t compute a distance. I suspect that the “seep” video was shot very close to the well, but can’t prove it.

Au contraire, mon zapkitty:

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions (detonations of nuclear devices at sea), landslides and other mass movements, bolide impacts, and other disturbances above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami.

Not saying you’re necessarily misinterpreting the numbers, but how do you get 10 N / 120 E out of “N 10431631.89 / E 1202852.86″? The E number has one digit less than the N number, for starters, and you have a 3-digit E vs. 2-digit N. (This is a real question, not snark.)

Maybe it’s something like X/Y millimeters from the surface ship’s radio beacon, rather than global lat/long?

see below

‘Specially if through some horrible miscalculation the nuke causes the rock cap over the petroleum reservoir to fail, and the seafloor subsides.

Give credit where credit is due. This video was released 3 days ago by this fellow: http://www.youtube.com/user/alexhiggins732#p/u

timr

Using a nuclear device on the sea floor that is already compromised by the 58 day leak is pure insanity. Let that sink in please! Any excuse that we are coming to a juncture where we can jam a nuclear device into the earth’s skin and close a gaping wound we produced is a piss-poor reason that lacks intelligence and reasoning.

There is a saying that still resounds with clarity and truth:
‘It is not that we have the ability to do this, but more about SHOULD we do this!’

We have no valid proof and even a scintilla of knowledge of what a ‘small or medium’ nuclear device would do on this particular site 5000 feet below the surface with both oil and methane gas blowing out freely and dangerously.

As for your defense of the ObamaRahm…please let it rest…it is not an issue of him being solely responsible for the leak, but an issue of his impotency, immorality, and floundering as well as flat out dishonesty as the so called leader of the free world. For starters he can tell the American people the real truth concerning the data that is being hidden by BP, their representatives, the Coast Guard, NOAA, and the rest of his lying cabal. We have a right to any and all knowledge regarding this catastrophe!

A good reason the rethugs are jumping all over him is directly related to his weak and indefensible lack of conviction and action on these issues…he still wants to play all that bipartisan-let’s play nice bullshit! Epic Fail!

For instance a 20 billion escrow account being pushed as some kind of spectacular success based on a disaster that easily will amount to 50 times that amount and counting…give me a break…BP will continue to wipe their ass with us aided and abetted by this weak president!

Try State Plane Coordinates relative to closest of Gulf States — and they’re probably in meters.

Channeling Oliver Hardy: “Precisely. This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.” (:>

That sounds like the voice of someone who actually knows something about the subject… thanks!

spackle? Why would he spackle when he can just reach his hands out and part the waters around the crack; reach down in there and heal the earth with his divine finger tips. You don’t need to do anything except sit there and keep your comfy chair from falling off the face of the earth. Surely you don’t question HIS will. I don’t understand it, but that doesn’t mean I question HIM. I’m sure he’ll fix it when he’s good and ready. Later on, he’ll explain it all to us in a way we can understand.

OT — Glad you’re here, that person had zero business harshing on you like that yesterday.

I have to wonder if the amount of oil leaked has caused the ceiling of the oil cavity to begin to collapse, causing cracks along the roof of the cavity. If that’s the case we’re in deep shit.

Nukes. Even a nuke with the yield of a “backpack” weapon available to the special forces would cause devastation and prolly release radioactive oil into the Gulf.

Thanks. Update added.

SoDr — you’re talking a SADM. (Or at least that’s what they were known as in the late-Sixties.) That was my MOS for fifteen months when I was stationed at Belvoir.

What’s being done on the beaches where you are, SD?

We’re just in planning stages. We had a spill in Tampa Bay in 93 so we know what to expect. What I’m hearing is there are more volunteers to clean up than needed and many will be used in logistic tasks, ie, hauling supplies, people, etc. The locals are determined to keep control of all operations local, rather than the feds or BP. The Seabird Sanctuary is heading up the task of rescuing birds but that may be futile since only about 1% of those rescued survive due to ingested oil before anybody could get to them. It ain’t pretty but we think we can make a go of it.

Damn straight. Gulf is a leaky place anyway… oil seeps out all over the place. Also the gulf has earthquakes… not many but there was one 3-4 years ago between a 5.0 and 6. About 100 miles due south of me… rattled my windows. As far as I can tell, there is no ‘they’ ‘there’. Haven’t heard anybody I believe. So, if anybody starts seriously talking nukes I’d like a coupld of hours head start.

I don’t think we know what we are looking at here.

Don’t be afraid to say the words “I don’t know.”

Glad you are keeping it local. The feds don’t seem much good for anything.

SEALs had something when I was in nucweaps but they were part of the gator Navy (amphibious) so I didn’t have access to their stuff. In my last 6 months the cruiser/destroyer force merged with the amphibs but we were still focused on ASROC/TERRIER/TALOS.

It was all hush-hush-secret at the time, but rumors among the ranks were that all branches were trained for SADM — also MADM. (TADM had been discontinued by the time I was young troop.)

And by the way, re young troop — anybody seen Raven lately?

The rock there is not solid, which explains the erosion and creates the possibility of a deep crater appearing suddenly. That’s how tsunamis happen. An earth quake changes the shape of the ocean floor catastrophically, and displaces vast amounts of water.

Yep. The leaking oil is creating a giant sinkhole that will one day collapse in on itself. Think of that huge hole in the middle of the city in Guatemala.

Time to face the facts. This will not be contained until the relief well is in place.

I don’t know if that is anyone’s fault, just the nature of this beast. I don’t think anyone could contain this thing.

Setting Wikipedia aside… with a 10-foot pole :) … a nuke by itself can only cause a tsunami-like wave for a relatively short distance. For instance if it’s detonated directly offshore of a city to be attacked.

It is true that this is the most destructive way to deploy a nuke but that doesn’t give a nuke the immense power of an earthquake.

A nuke does not have the energy to propel a tsunami from the well to the gulf coast. Not even the Tsar bomb had that much power.

You can only get the water damage “bonus” if the bomb is set off in water next to a target. Hint: during the next nuclear war stay away from harbors.

The worries of a nuke under the gulf are

1) It fails and things don’t change much.

2) It fails and makes things worse, but not any worse than they were going to get regardless of the nuke.

2) It fractures the rock over the reservoir. Extinction event for quite a few species.

If they start talking of using any explosives to seal the well then it means the worst of the worst is happening.

Sorry, but you and I can’t possibly know all the consequences of deploying a nukular device over the reservoir. If the reservoir roof should collapse that could displace enough sea floor to cause a massive wave and depending on the underwater topography of the shoreline along the Gulf coast, accelerating and focusing the power of the wave inland. Not to mention the possible increased eruption of oil.

You and I just don’t know enough about this to be so sanguine. But keep trying . . . (:>

The faith so many have in a nuclear explosion to by some mysterious means re incarcerate oil and gas by fractured and fracture prone basalt borders on the religious dogma that power is good because it is power. Whatever power does will be good.

What thoughts if any have you given to that tacky radioactive stuff that is released by a nuclear reaction?

Does anyone know who took this video and what proof is there of it being of the Deep Horizon?

Here’s a sobering view from someone with industry experience:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967

Wow! Thanks for that grim and sobering link.

The bottom line is that the gushing oil flow is filled with rocks and sand that is rapidly sand-blasting out the inside of the hole, and by the time we get the relief well dug, the hole is likely to be too big to plug. Sweet! Just fucking sweet!

See @42 for provenance.

Do you have an issue with plausibility?

Thanks for putting the nuke option into perspective.

You overestimate the ability of a small nuke to safely close the well at a depth of 5000 ft. I would like to see all those advocating for use of a nuke to close the well play the Slim Pickens part if that actually becomes a suggested solution.

I have no idea why Americans want to use nukes every time we have a problem that looks insoluble. Maybe it’s because we used them on other nations and have never really understood their consequences. We even talk about using a microwave to nuke our food.

How many of those were done in water?

How many of those were done in DEEP water, and below the seabed?

If a nuke (or conventional exposives) should destabilize any part of the strata involved, things might tend to fracture, collapse, etc.

Envision a sea bed collapse of size, a veritable earthquake event.

That would generate some wave action, I expect.

If you have a knowledge of GPS coordinates, you can check the location by the N and E lines on the top left. The depth is reasonable. There are two Viking Poseidon ROV’s working at the site. (Checking with the dKos liveblog, both are showing test patterns, which means they are on the ships at the moment.) The film is from five days ago, and it is likely that if this was really an indication of a casing breach that BP would be monitoring this area fairly continuously. Discussion on the dKos liveblog came to the conclusion that it is likely oil that sank to the Gulf floor and has been stirred up by the propellers of the ROV that is shooting the video.

I’m amazed how many folks want it to be worse than it is just so it will drive politics.

I have to wonder if the amount of oil leaked has caused the ceiling of the oil cavity to begin to collapse, causing cracks along the roof of the cavity. If that’s the case we’re in deep shit.

Right on hoss, along with the well bore itself, pressure from the BOP, the fallen rig itself, all which shook the muddy floor. Imagine that BOP falling over as what little of a stable muddy platform erodes . . . .

Nukes/’splosives are insane.

Fine, then use the same device that was deployed to close Rand Paul’s Pie Hole !

*Ducks and Runs*

EDIT: Reply to Larue @ 75.

I just checked the video of the ROV at the riser and cap. This is the position:
N: 10431618.37
E: 1202800.69
Dept: 4925.7

Therefore, the video does appear to be from the Deepwater Horizon location.

Apologize accepted Joe Barton…you asshole!

I don’t know that a nuke would work, but I also don’t understand why the scenarios are entirely different; as people suggest.

The idea is to place the explosive charge far enough down, and close enough to the well, that the explosion causes the well to collapse. Those two realities are congruent between the differing situations.

The risk that the explosion causes the seafloor to rupture could be a problem, but so was the case with the Russians collapsing the cavity containing the gas that was spewing out. I’d think some significant modeling of the specific geology would be required to be able to say that a nuke, or some other significant amount of high explosives, wouldn’t work. No?

Well, I don’t see how a seafloor leak necessarily implies a rock cap leak. If there’s 1000′ of mud before the rock starts, then that’s more than plenty for a lateral leak into the mud, above the rock cap. That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a rock cap leak; it just doesn’t require it as the on;y explanation, is all.

There are parts of the vid that show a LARGER plume of disturbed stuff flowing. I believe that could easily be kicked up by the ROV thrusters.

But with clear screen, there’s OBVIOUSLY something puffin up from BENEATH the seabed . . . so I think yer half right about the ROV thrusters . . . I don’t think you can discount the visible evidence of the other.

Yes, in that more study is definitely needed, but no, in that a rupture on land at the surface doesn’t inject cubic miles of crude into the world’s oceans. Both rupture risks, but with vastly different consequences.

Rand Paul has never shut his pie hole!!!

*G*

+1 on that. Many gusts large and forceful and long enough to not be consistent with settled oil getting washed aside by ROV props.

So we -are- doomed, then…

Suddenly releasing many hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of natural-gas into the atmosphere would seem to be a non-trivial problem.

Agreed . . . . but there’s leaks.

As to the bore casing . . . there were the three graphics posted on FDL from other sources showing three depths, three ‘rings’ which could have or have been either busted or compromised.

I forget what depths they were at . . . but if all are compromised, and there are leaks at all three places, well, that’s a lot of leaky.

It’s frustrating to now know what BP knows, ain’t it . . . but The Oil Drum does a fine job of keeping it all real.

And even folks there have suggested there ARE other leaks around the site that aren’t being shown, some suggesting THOSE leak(s) are leaking even greater amounts than from the well bore site, head, BOP and fallen riser/rig.

It’s pretty easy from all we DO know, to infer that the worst COULD be happening with just the erosion factor alone.

I just don’t see this getting any better, only worse.

We can only hope Randy Paul’s Pie Hole will be the doom of him, sooner than later.

Nice chatting with you folks, gonna move on . . . hopin for the best, just don’t know what it will be.

Guess it depends on what metrics you value. There would certainly be some increase in atmospheric greehouse gasses with the expected long term climate change implications. However I would not necessarily expect mass species extinction events nor immediate regional economic devastation from the aerial release of the natural-gas deposits from a single petroleum reservoir — whereas we’re already seeing those same effects from what’s by comparison a mere trickling leak into the GoM. Imagine what the full Monty would be like.

Put a huge diamond ring around the well head. It will stop putting out within the week.

/Just kidding
//not really

You’re right, detonating a nuke is not such a good idea

Also considering the fragility of the geology of the Mississippi Canyon suggests that the underlying strata fractures and then you have a gazillion barrels gushing out instead of hundreds of thousands per day

It is highly probable, therefore, that the canyon originated from massive shelf-edge slope failure on an unstable continental margin. A series of successive failures, each one creating an upslope instability that triggered the next failure, caused an elongate trough to form that excavated the canyon to a depth of 1,220 m. below present sea level. Once the canyon has formed, its steep side walls continued to be unstable and sediments slumped into the canyon axis, forming the initial canyon fill. This phase is well documented: the lowermost sediment fill is composed of displaced material similar to that now found on the canyon rim.

I have a problem with swallowing as fact an undocumented video or other data.

I have no problem believing there may well be fractures in the sea floor leaking oil and gas The question is how near the surface are those fractures? The relief wells going to near the bottom of the casing should be able to shut off all oil exiting at the floor or rig level.

Kind of a shame they can’t deliver enough liquid nitrogen deep enough to freeze it.

Who could disagree? Since there is some available information as to source, I guess I was asking whether you investigated it and are satisfied vs. not satisfied with it.

There is a difference between sea bed and sea floor. Also remember that this is pretty much underneath the riser and the leak (check the N, E, and D locations). Maybe by a couple hundred feet or less.

Just trying to stay calm, even though there is plenty of reason to believe we are being lied to and that the catastrophe may be just beginning. There are days I feel I should just accept that our beautiful Gulf and much of the wonderful wildlife will be gone forever. Then I try to garner some optimism and faith in the endurance of life and good people.

Sorry… physics says what a nuke can and can’t do. Not me.

And I pity anyone who could interpret my words as saying that I somehow think that using a nuke is a good idea in this situation.

But the assumption that a nuke will automatically cause a tsunami on its own is just plain wrong and is the basis of a lot of BS stirred up by reality-challenged people who are convinced that the recent Asian tsunami was caused by nukes. A whole frickin’ cottage industry on the web there…

If the cap fractures then that is an unknown… and a person can wave their paws about possible results as rapidly as they wish… but if the well is not stopped then that is also an unknown.

But if the well is not stopped there are some things that we do know although this might be news to some who are hyperventilating over the mere thought of a nuke detonation…

… more people will eventually be killed by the release of the reservoir than by any tsunami. Whether drip by drip or if the rock cap is fractured.

Again: if they do decide to blast the well then it’ll be the classic no-win scenario and the choice will just be a case of “pick your poison”…

Skepticism and optimism are excellent qualities. Don’t think we should cast doubt on evidence without checking it out first, in cases like this where checking it out is possible. Very often it’s not, and I’m with 100% you in skepticism there.

That doesn’t look like the sea floor to me. Looks like metal. Could it be the sunken platform?

I’d think some significant modeling of the specific geology would be required to be able to say that a nuke, or some other significant amount of high explosives, wouldn’t work.

A couple of weeks ago I read an article (can remember where) that seriously looked at the nuclear option. I believe the president looked into it just to have all the options explored.

As you said the geology needs to be right, it isn’t.

Thanks you for the good information. As I said in another post I am just trying to not succumb to hysteria that it is worse than it already it.

Thanks for understanding :-)

What do the latitude and longitude numbers in the video mean?

N 104311631 and
E 12028252

are not degrees, minutes, seconds, nor degrees (they can’t go over 180.xxxx)…

Help?

The approximate location of the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico is:

28 degrees North latitude and 89 degrees West longitude.

Latitude is the number of degrees, minutes and seconds north or south of the equator and cannot exceed 90 degrees. Longitude is the number of degrees east or west of the north-south longitude line that goes through Greenwich, UK., and cannot exceed 180 degrees. For example, London is less than one degree west of Greenwich and 51 degrees 30 minutes north of the equator. The North Pole is 90 degrees north of the equator and the South Pole is 90 degrees south of the equator.

Manilla is 121 degrees East of Greenwich and 14 degrees North of the equator, which is pretty close to the coordinates in question.

The location of the coordinates in the photograph is in the Sulu Sea a little over 300 miles south of Manilla, heading 188.5 degrees southwest of 0 degrees north. There is a location there that’s 5,000 feet deep. Palawan is less than 100 miles to the west.

Hey they let that well just erupt oil and gas for two months now, claiming they couldn’t do anything about it.

If the casing is split the worst thing they could do, was just let the pressure work on the casing split pushing out through it until it found a way to the surface.

Not just BP, but between their engineers and our top engineers and scientists they are proving they haven’t the brains to come in out of the rain.

They could have plugged the well in days, and even with a split casing or bad cement job. Their like a bunch of little old ladies setting ringing their hands saying, “what are we going to do.” We can’t do anything, and the only way is the bottom kill and the relief wells. Well those relief wells have just as much chance of ending in another blow out as this well did.

They could have cut the blow out preventer off, then inserted a drill string in the pipe and pushed it down till it got passed the split casing or bad cement job. The weight of the drill string would have overcame the pressure of the well when they got enough weight on it. By inserting sets of slips between the pipe joints the slips let the pipe go in, but bite into the casing if the pipe trys to push bach out. Filling that hole bad bore hole with steel, would be just as effective as the bottom kill.

We have become a Country of can’t do’ers, instead of a Country of do’ers. Just think after Cyhernoble if the Russians had just sat back and said we can’t do anything about it. We are showing it with letting our jobs be exported all over the world, by not being able to fix our economy, and by being at the mercy of other Countries because we can’t fix our own problems.

Alex Higgens Is a Liar.

he has been notified several times that this is just a bot caught on a monkey fist, stirring up sediment as it struggles to get free, screencaps of prior to this video and of the bots rescue by another ROV are all posted and he knows about them

THERE IS NO LEAK (besides the riser)

Sorry, but we have reached a point beyond bitching about what could have or should have been done.

For reasons that I have previously expressed, I do not favor the nuclear explosion approach. That is not to say that a bunker-buster bomb might not work. Scientists keeping in mind the adage, “First, do no harm,” need to figure that out to the best of their abilities and the answer they come up with will without doubt have to be expressed in terms of some probability of success. Obviously, the unknowns have to be reduced as close as possible to zero, realizing as we do, that we lack sufficient knowledge to reduce it to zero.

If the relief well option does not work, and I predict it won’t, we likely will be faced with a mass extinction event that could include the extinction of homo sapiens sapiens. The question we may be forced to answer is whether we should risk destroying all life on the planet to save ourselves or let the well potentially wipe us out as it wreaks its havoc secure in the realization that some life will survive, even if we do not.

Fascinating question to consider, eh what?

Well, guess what? We’d better start now because this is a serious matter.

Nuclear weapons to stop an oil well leak? Some of you folks are spending way to much time watching the Sci-Fi Channel.

Amen BearOnaCliff. Internet hysteria only raises distracting dust about the blowout and the damage being done to the Gulf Coast people and environment.