Monday, May 24, 2010

Gulf Spill Cam

Here is the Sixty Minutes segment on the Deepwater Horizon if you didn't see it. There is also a good technical piece on what may have happened to the Deepwater Horizon here at the Oil Drum. In the meantime, this is still happening. (And something is happening)



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Monday, May 10, 2010

Spill O Meter



Sunday, May 02, 2010

Deepwater Horizon


To quote the Vice President, this is a big f#cking deal. Go to NOAA for developments. Also check out the Louisiana state site.

This comes from Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground

The oil slick from the April 20 explosion and blowout of the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon continues to affect the Louisiana coast near the mouth of the Mississippi River, and along the Chandelier Islands off the coast of Mississippi. Strong south to southeast winds blowing at 15 - 25 knots will continue through Monday, which will push oil onto portions of the eastern Louisiana coast from the mouth of the Mississippi River northwards towards the Mississippi border.

However, the current trajectory forecasts now show the advance of the oil will slow over the next few days, despite the strong onshore winds. This is probably due to the fact that the shape of the Louisiana coast is setting up a counter-clockwise rotating eddy over the ocean regions between the Mississippi coast and the mouth of the Mississippi River, as seen on the latest forecast of ocean currents from the NOAA HYCOM model (see also this alternative view of the HYCOM ocean current forecast.) Unfortunately, there are no buoys in this region of the ocean to tell us what the currents are.
more

And according to reporting by Skytrack, this is much worse than we might imagine:

Dr. Ian MacDonald at FSU just produced a new spill-size estimate based on the US Coast Guard aerial overflight map of the oil slick on April 28, 2010. The bottom line: that map implies that on April 28, there was a total of 8.9 million gallons floating on the surface of the Gulf.

That implies a minimum average flow rate of slightly more than 1 million gallons of oil (26,000 barrels) per day from the leaking well on the seafloor. Since we're now in Day 11 of the spill, which began with a blowout and explosion on April 20, we estimate that by the end of the today 12.2 million gallons of oil, at a minimum, have been spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.

This deepwater blowout indeed shows us the Deepwater Horizon.

And we are in deep s#hit.



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