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captain
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Blue Water Horizon spill

Thu Apr 29, 2010 7:31 pm

Just started getting the smell of oil from the spill in the gulf 100 miles to the southeast.
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JES
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Re: Blue Water Horizon spill

Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:36 am

What a tragedy. From the loss of life and the environmental damage that has and will continue to happen. :(
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capn_tucker
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Re: Blue Water Horizon spill

Fri Apr 30, 2010 7:50 am

Yep, oil disasters continue to screw over everyone and everything. Amoco Cadiz, Exxon Valdez, Blue Water Horizon, and on and on..
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Douchebag
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Re: Blue Water Horizon spill

Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:19 pm

And people wonder why "crazy Californians" fight offshore drilling. Have you seen our coastline? Now imagine it covered in black. It would bring a tear to my eye..
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USdiver
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Re: Blue Water Horizon spill

Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:37 pm

I'm praying for the Gulf of Mexico and all of its shoreline.

This is going to be THE NEWS for divers in 2010. I'm afraid that many wonderful places like the Flower Gardens, the USS Oriskany, etc. will be ruined.

The well is 5,000 ft deep and until now BP has been unable to stop the flow. This is a very serious problem.
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captain
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Re: Blue Water Horizon spill

Fri Apr 30, 2010 6:57 pm

A little perspective for the chicken little out there .Consider the 1979 Ixtoc 1 spill in the gulf of Mexico was and still is the largest spill in history and the gulf survived it. So far this spill is a small fraction of that spill and more than likely will never be anywhere near what Ixtoc 1 was.
Ixtoc 1 spilled 140,000,000 gallons of oil. This spill at the max estimate of 210 000 gallons a day would have to go on for 666 days to equal Ixtoc 1.
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Douchebag
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Re: Blue Water Horizon spill

Fri Apr 30, 2010 7:22 pm

captain wrote:A little perspective for the chicken little out there .Consider the 1979 Ixtoc 1 spill in the gulf of Mexico was and still is the largest spill in history and the gulf survived it. So far this spill is a small fraction of that spill and more than likely will never be anywhere near what Ixtoc 1 was.
Ixtoc 1 spilled 140,000,000 gallons of oil. This spill at the max estimate of 210 000 gallons a day would have to go on for 666 days to equal Ixtoc 1.
"Chicken Little" eh? You're right though. Let's see it happened April 20, it's now the 30th. 10 x 210000=2.1million gallons with more to come...a lot more. But yeah you're right it's nothing to get upset about. Just don't eat the fish you spear in the gulf for a few years, or dive for a while, or go to the marsh lands, or the beach, not to mention the damage to marine life. But yeah you're right, it's no big deal. :roll:
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Re: Blue Water Horizon spill

Fri Apr 30, 2010 8:02 pm

Truth never got in the way of a good news story... Fear sells and keeps sheep watching.....If we step back a couple of years every snapper head on TV said NOLA would be uninhabitable for 10+ years and that it would never be rebuilt....Once again not so much....A terrible event but nature has a way of fixing things no matter how hard we try to screw it up...
Doing it right should include some common sense, not just blindly following specs and instructions. .Gary D, AWAP on SB

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captain
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Re: Blue Water Horizon spill

Fri Apr 30, 2010 10:49 pm

The point of my post is to put some perspective on it and not the emotional "the end of diving in the Gulf as we know it is over". I am 100 miles as the crow flies from the spill so for all practical purposes it is in my back yard.
Is it good, anyone who would accuse me of saying it is good, or even acceptable doesn't know me.
What I do accept is the inevitability that bad things will occasionally happen when you are operating on the cutting edge of technology. Drilling from an un anchored dynamically positioned rig in 5000 feet of water is on the cutting edge.

There are about 4000 offshore wells in the Gulf off the Louisiana, Texas and Alabama coast. This is the largest single event in the 60 years of drilling in this area of the Gulf.
The BOP shear ram apparently activated but didn't completely shear and seal the well but is restricting the flow. How much is actually flowing can not be measured, NOAA estimates are being based on their observation if the slick. BP is basing their estimate which is lower, by observing the leaks with ROVs and calculating the flow based on the observed size of the splits in the pipe and estimates of pressure in the pipe. One thing is quite obvious is the well is not flowing at what it could have had there been a complete failure of the BOP to operate like in the case of the Ixtoc 1 spill.
BP is working on placing what are basically upside down funnels with lines running to the surface over the 3 leaks to catch the oil until a relief well can be completed. This has been done successfully before just not in that deep a depth.
So far weather is not as bad as had been predicted and this appears to be helping.
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kgehring
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Re: Blue Water Horizon spill

Fri Apr 30, 2010 11:05 pm

I think it is Terrible. It reminds me of this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4ozVMxzNAA[/youtube]
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Re: Blue Water Horizon spill

Sat May 01, 2010 7:12 am

It does suck but the safety record is pretty amazing overall. I was not aware of any spills during Katrina which speakes well for the technology. I am afraid that this disaster will spell doom and gloom for expanding off shore drilling. Virginia was preparing to do some exploration in preparation to drill. This incident will be used to stop drilling and we will continue stay dependent on Arab oil. This could not have happened at a worse time. I am one that thinks we need to be reliant on our own resources and not be at the mercy of those that only tolerate us for our $$$ and secretly long to saw off our heads.

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