Posts Tagged ‘Gulf oil spill’
Oil Rig Explodes in the Gulf of Mexico (Again)
Miss the good old days of daily oil disaster news? Worry not, for another oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded this morning, leaving all 13 crew members in the water but – according to initial reports – all are alive and only one is injured. The rig is owned by Mariner Energy (somewhere a BP exec is breathing again) and is not currently producing, according to the Coast Guard. Updated. Details are sketchy right now, but rescuers are en route to the site about 80 miles south of the central Louisiana coast. We'll update as this one develops.
Update: Reuters is reporting that the Coast Guard has spotted a one-nautical-mile by 100-foot oil sheen in the water at the site of the rig explosion. The fire has been contained, but the flames have not yet been completely extinguished.
Update: USA Today now reports that the initial claim of an oil sheen by Mariner Energy cannot be confirmed by the Coast Guard, and that an aerial flyover by Mariner personnel could not locate the oil sheen reported earlier. In other good news, the fire aboard the oil platform has now been extinguished.
[NYT]
Autonomous Swarming Robots Can Skim Sea Surface, Collecting Oil As A Team
The belt is made of an ultra-light nanowire mesh, patented at MIT, that can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil. Its hydrophobic properties deflect water while sucking up various forms of pollution. The nanowire's inventors have compared it to a paper towel for oil spills.
The belt attaches to a yellow “head” covered in photovoltaic panels, according to its designers, based at MIT’s Senseable City Lab. As the robot moves head-first through the water, the conveyor belt sucks up oil, which is squeezed out into the head. As the clean part of the belt emerges from the head, the process starts over.
Seaswarm robots are intended to work as a fleet, hence the name. The robots would communicate via GPS and WiFi networks to coordinate clean-up, and they would not require human involvement, unlike current ocean skimmers. They are just 16 feet long by seven feet wide, so they would be able to access coastlines, marshes and estuaries, unlike current skimmers that attach to boats.
The design team tested their prototype in Boston’s Charles River this month and they say the conveyor belt easily adapted to the surface waves.
The robot works by detecting the edge of a spill and moving inward until it has removed the oil, the project's Web site says. Because the robot's head consumes the oil, the robot does not need to make repeated trips back to shore, making it a much more efficient cleaner.
After 106 Days, ‘Static Kill’ Appears to Have Stopped the Gulf Oil Leak
Before we talk about what this means, a quick spin through the numbers is in order. It's now day 106 since the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion occurred, claiming the lives of 11 rig workers and kicking off what is most currently being estimated as a 62,000-barrel-a-day (barrels, not gallons, making it 12 times faster than BP originally claimed) flow of oil into Gulf waters. All in, 4.9 million barrels, or 205 million gallons, of crude were spilled, costing BP billions in cleanup efforts (they're still on the hook for more) and causing unquantifiable damage to Gulf and Gulf Coast ecosystems.
That's the bad news. The good news is that the worst appears to be behind us. BP is still mulling its options with Coast Guard officials and may either pump in more drilling mud to push the oil deeper into its source rock, or it may begin pumping concrete into the well to cap it off for good. BP is also moving forward with the drilling of the relief well so they can also seal the well from the bottom for added security.
So where are all these 5 million barrels of oil? There's good news being reported on that front as well. The New York Times reports this morning that the government is expected to announce that only 26 percent of that oil remains in the water. The other three-quarters have evaporated, dispersed, or been removed by cleanup efforts. How damaging the lingering and dispersed oil is remains to be seen.
Of course, there's still the issue of the 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants that were dumped into the water and the various unknown effects they might have on ocean life. But for now, the spill itself appears to (finally) be over with, and that's as good as the news can get at this point.
[Discovery News, NYT, WSJ]
X-Prize Challenge Offers $1.4 Million for Revolutionary Oil Cleanup Tech
Inspired, of course, by the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- which as of this writing appears to still be contained -- the new X Challenge aims to provide impetus for both venture capital and innovative talent gravitate toward next-gen oil cleanup technology.
"The devastating impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill will last for years and it is inevitable that future spills will occur -- both from wells and from transport tankers," stated X-Prize Chairman Dr. Peter Diamandis at this morning's official announcement of the prize in Washington, D.C.
The challenge will be a two-stage affair. Phase one calls for those vying for the prize to put their technical approaches to the problem before a panel of judges that will evaluate them for feasibility, cost, scalability, environmental impact, and the degree to which the technology improves over current methods like skimming and booms.
Phase two, of course, is the demonstration of the technology in action. Competitors won't actually take their ideas to the Gulf for testing -- all evaluations will take place at the National Oil Spill Response Research & Renewable Energy Test Facility (OHSMETT) in New Jersey. But with any luck some of that technology will make it to the field eventually. The team with the single best technology will receive a $1 million prize purse, with second and third place taking home $300,000 and $100,000 respectively.
The prize's namesake and benefactor, Wendy Schmidt, is the wife of Google CEO Eric Schmidt and the philanthropic force behind a handful of charitable foundations, including the Schmidt Marine Science Research Institute, which she co-founded with her husband.
One More Proposal to Plug the Oil Leak, But Can We Afford To Make Things Worse?
Saying things can’t get any worse in the Gulf at this point seems like a dubious claim, but Willard Wattenburg’s idea has made it all the way to the desk of Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Why? Wattenburg orchestrated the capping of 500 wells in just seven months in Kuwait in the aftermath of Gulf One, a job that was estimated to take 5 years, so he’s got the oil industry chops. But naturally there are some who think the idea is a bad gamble that could indeed exacerbate later efforts to stem the flow of oil.
Wattenburg’s simple idea involves pumping steel balls into the leaking riser that are heavy enough to sink downward in spite of the upward pressure from the upward-surging oil. Once the balls get deep enough down they’ll begin to settle and slow the flow – the job the drilling mud failed to do during the top kill. Once the flow is decreased, we can pump in the concrete and cap the well. We’ll need a bout 200 tons of steel balls, Wattenburg says. Total cost: about $100,000.
What’s more, if it fails if fails without leaving an environmental crisis in its wake, Wattenburg says, and the relatively low cost make it worth a try.
Other engineers are skeptical. For one, they say, the oil is rushing up not through the central pipe, but through the space between the central pipe and the outer casing. The balls would likely take the easiest route downward into the central pipe, where they won’t make a difference. Further, a bunch of steel balls in the well could complicate capping efforts once the relief wells are complete.
The real question now is: Do we make the conservative play and wait for the relief wells to be drilled or should the government go in and attempt new methods of plugging that damn hole. And if those attempts make matters even worse in the Gulf, does that take the blame off of BP to some degree?
Meet the Robots On the Oil Leak’s Front Lines
Remotely operated robots are shooting video, carrying equipment, drilling pieces into place, and monitoring the flow of oil. BP has contracted with at least four robotics companies, including Oceaneering International Inc., Subsea 7 and C-Innovation, to do the work, according to NPR.
Initially, the undersea robots were unimpressive, failing to activate a valve that could have sealed the well from the surface. But since then, they cut the broken riser pipe and placed both containment domes over the spewing well. They’ve also provided the live video streaming across millions of TV screens.
Teams of humans on boats are controlling the robots, which have names like Maxximum, Hercules and Skandi Neptune. The human operators -- two for each robot -- drive using joysticks, but they can’t see where their undersea avatars are going. Even with headlights, the robots’ environment is almost completely dark, so they use sonar to gauge their proximity to objects.
The ROVs range in size from that of a small car to a big truck, although most of their bulk consists of foam intended to protect them from the intense pressures found at 5,000 feet below the surface. They remain connected to fiber-optic or copper tethers that enable communications, but sometimes ocean currents tangle or even break those lifelines.
The spill has shown the world how much hinges on the work of a team of robots, according to John Mair, global technology manager for the Scottish firm Subsea 7.
Here’s hoping they (and their human drivers) can handle the pressure.
Depressing: Oil Spilled To Date Could Power 38,000 Cars For a Year
As of today, Wednesday, June 9, the oil spewing from the Deepwater Horizon well could have powered 38,000 cars, 3,400 trucks and 1,800 ships for a full year, according to University of Delaware professor James J. Corbett.
Corbett, a marine policy professor, has a Web site that calculates the spilled oil's lost potential on a daily basis. He uses an estimate of 19,000 barrels a day, the most recent government guess. He says he created the site to put the spill in perspective that petroleum users can easily understand.
Meanwhile, Science Magazine estimates $1 million in oil is being spilled each day.
And that's saying nothing of the lingering economic effects.
[PhysOrg]