Well, thanks to BP's well sinking, the Gulf has 5,000 barrels of crude oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. Who all will be affected, I know I will be.

I have been on site for the last two weeks since April 20 as Florida Department of Environmental Protection liaison
The Deep Water Horizon well is not controlled at this time. This has the potential to be one of the biggest environmental disaster in history of the USA. Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 that spill was 10 million barrels. The report I receive today said that we will exceed that amount in 40 days. The prospects on drilling the relief wells that's a little unclear it took 90 days +/- to drill the first well. If there is a total blow out of the well we will exceed 10 million barrels amount in 5 days. I'm on site and most likely will be for a few months to come. The oil slick is as of today 3000 sq miles. The burning was suspended today because of weather. There are about 2000 persons out here working 24 hr a day trying to get a handle on this thing. Not to be critical but BP misses their opportunity to control this thing early on the April 23 when they declared the well under control. We are projecting landfall in the Florida panhandle on Monday April 26 If the wind remain out of the south as predicted

Rick

So how is it going? Any good news yet or is it all still a giant mess.

Yeah that place is a big mess from what I can see on the news. The "brown caps" are crazy...I've never seen anything like that before.

Let's see Seas 5 to 8 ft, winds out of the south at 25, weather moving in with heavy rain tonight. This thing is getting bigger by the day and BP has no prospects of bringing it under control in the short term.
The only good new is that this morning Sat photo and forecast put the slick South and East of yesterdays location

I'll give you what We have on the web
http://ocean.floridamarine.org/acp/mobacp/
http://ocean.floridamarine.org/acp/mobacp/gis.html


Rick

Thx Rick for all the info, please keep an update on the spill. Lets hope a ton doesn't get into the gulf stream and go towards Europe and up the eastern coastline.
We may not be oil free for a century or two. Too bad crude oil is less flamable so, burning will be harder. BP needs to take some responsibility.

I got dragged into this mess for 3 reasons that they feel make me the guy for the job. I was a Navy diver with MDSU 2, I'm a Mechanical Engineer by training, and I work for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection as a water quality specialist. I could give a rat about a Oil Rig as long as oil doesn't start washing up on the beach or we start see wildlife kills. I'm here to observe and survey the extent of the spill and impact on the wildlife.
The last 15 years I have spent on the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) and Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) with the exception of a few sewage and chemical spill that I worked
All in all BP has done a good job getting the tools on site to work with there are mile and mile of containment boom, nine robotic subs, 60 sea going vessels and 4000 people working on this mess 24 hr a day. They contacted 500 fishing boat today to place containment boom.

I meant they need to accept they should've fixed the pipe.
If they fixed the pipe, no oil into tthe gulf.
Their current fix of cementing the pipe and well down may take 3 months.

If they had any Idea how to fix it
It under a mile of water so all the work has to be done with robotic subs.
The riser pipe is bent in a "z" shape with the drill stem still in place in the riser pipe this is what most likely is keeping the blind ram and the Pipe rams from closing. This should have have activated itself automatically at the time of the blowout. The idea of cutting the riser pipe off an putting a sleeve and valve on the stub was kick around early on but was kill because the only thing keeping the well from spilling millions of gallons a day is the bent riser pipe

Rick

Man, sounds like a big mess and a huge project, no "quick" fix. Shame though that this went unnoticed for so long before breaking. All we can do is hope it gets fixed asap and with minimal damage to the environment.

Doesn't surprise me with BP. They are infamous in the industry for careless, improper and unethical maintenance practices. If this refinery ever closes down or I ever get laid off, I would not work for BP. Their track record speaks for itself. Something like 20 deaths the past 10 years at BP facilities, 40 or so at the Texas City refinery alone in the past 30 years. To put that into perspective, Frontier is a small refinery without the assets BP has, and in it's 80 year history, the refinery I work at has had three deaths, the last one in 1992. The CSB and OSHA are all over BPs asses, not to mention the environmental pressures they've faced from the DEQ and the EPA. And BP just keeps right on conducting their business the same way. I must say that BPs carelessness has produced positive side effects. Their carelessness has led to some stricter governmental mandates and regulations, forcing other companies to take a closer look at their own policies and practices. Believe me, that has been a boon. Nobody wants to be like BP with regulation agencies watching every little twitch, and the better maintenance and operating practices that have resulted have been good.

Seriously folks, every single one of us is eventually gonna feel the effect of this spill to one extent or another. 5000 bbls a day of production doesn't seem like a lot. But it is enough to get some prices and profit margins shifting. It's been beneficial for the refinery I work at, since some companies have shifted gas and diesel destined to this region to regions that would've got the products from that 5000 BPD. Where do ya'll think the final expense from all these changes and the difference in profit margins is gonna be made up at?

Here's another oil industry article ya'll may find interesting: dead grebes found at oil refinery. Our nearset competitors. They've had a helluva time with environmental issues the past year. I suspect Sinclair is gonna take a beatin' on this one. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service doesn't play nice. We had a pair of ducks make a nest on our stormwater holding pond a coupla years back. Ya wouldn't believe the hoops we had to jump through to accomodate the ducks, because by law ya can't disturb the nest. The USFWS insisted we take all kind of actions, and the water in the pond wasn't even contaminated with anything. It was rainwater runoff. This was to prevent harming one pair of ducks or their future clutch. In this case, the birds are already dead. It's not gonna be pretty...

WYite

It's not eventually. Local gas stations are jumping 5 to 10 cents a day around here and are blaming it all on this.

I'm surprised there isn't some sort of waterproof seal, or cement or something of the sort that can't just be poured over the entire pipe area to seal it off from leaking anymore and then to figure out a way to route around that spot.

Wouldn't the easy thing to do (if the environment is the main concern) be to plug the well? Since it would cost tons of money to disassemble, relocate the rig and drill another well I suspect they are looking for a cheaper fix and not just and environmentally conscious fix.

Gas prices are already going up here as well.

Glad there is no BP gas that I know of here in NM....