Gulf oil spill dispersant

jim wrote in news:7b6dnVKPmckykpjRnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@bright.net:

*If* it doesn't just break the pipe and leave something that they can't just screw a cap onto. A far more likely occurance with a 9" pipe IMHO.

There are no nine inch pipes involved. The riser is a 20" pipe with 1" thick walls. They are today in the process of using the shear to cut off a couple hundred feet of that 20" pipe. Since the pipe is to be discarded anyway there would be nothing lost by crimping it before trying the top kill. It seems like that would be an obvious first step unless they had no real desire to actually make the top kill work. The choice for them is this: Do they make a serious effort to kill the well or do they instead try to suck the million dollars per day worth of oil coming out of the hole up into tanker. Seems pretty obvious which choice they made.

-jim

Here are some of the components of those dispersants. There is not a proper "soap" in the lot:

1,2-Propanediol 2-butoxyethanol,

Butanedioic acid, 2-sulfo-, 1,4-bis(2-ethylhexyl) ester, sodium salt (1:1)

Sorbitan, mono-(9Z)-9-octadecenoate

Sorbitan, mono-(9Z)-9-octadecenoate, poly(oxy-1,2-ethanediyl) derivs.

Sorbitan, tri-(9Z)-9-octadecenoate, poly(oxy-1,2-ethanediyl) derivs

1-(2-butoxy-1-methylethoxy)-2-Propanol,

Distillates (petroleum), hydrotreated light

There are a couple of questionable compounds in this

list, but most are biodegradable (with normal oceanic

bacteria, assuming oxygen is present) to some degree

and not extremely toxic.

These formulations would have been tested and approved

by an approved testing laboratory, such as Warren Springs, and would have been approved by the EPA.

I dont know exactly which "Distillate" they use. This

designation is often used to describe a naphtha or

whitespirit which contains a variety of hydrocarbon

molecules. Some of these are classified as biodegradable

but a lot are not.

The butoxyethanol has a lot of common names and is

a component of a popular household spray cleaner that

you all know (Well, I dont know if the Canadians have

it on the shelves). This one has some toxic effects to

humans and apparently does not biodegrade quickly.

It has been detected in the Gulf of Mexico waters many

miles out to sea, and the source was believed to be

household use. See MSDS

Most are nonionics and they are not classical "soaps".

The sulfonate is a synthetic surfactant, is anionic.

If there had only been 1000 barrels of oil per day

coming from this blowout, dispersants might have

helped. But as we now know that there are 40-100,000

barrels per day escaping, the use of dispersants is

hopeless.

I received a communication today which claims that

one of the major service companies left the rig about 6 hours before the blowout because of safety concerns.

This company allegedly warned the BP boss that their activities were unsafe, and if they didnt stop and kill the well, they were leaving.

The story further claims that the company man chose

not to kill the well, and this company paid for its own

helicopter transportation off the rig.

Take it or leave it.

A woman who used to live next door to me, she works offshore for Shell.I once asked her what would she do if a big fire broke out on that oil rig.She said she would get in a lifeboat and get the hell away from there as fast as she could. cuhulin

There are emergency evacuation procedures, and you have to know what they are and how to implement them.

An oil well fire is a frightening thing. All of us had to have a firefighting course before we went offshore. Some of these exercises were scary as hell.. Some of my crew got burned, but none seriously.

The new survival craft are amazing. You climb in and take your position, get belted into place, and then the entire boat is launched from the platform into the sea.. It goes underwater, totally, and resurfaces some distance from the platform. It is a ballistic vessel.

Some places still use the old Whittaker and other survival craft. If you dont know what you are doing, or if you screw up because you are panicked, you can kill yourself.

Good old Jeri, (she works offshore for Shell) I am sure she knows all of the proper procedures.

One time, when she and her twin sister were living next door to me, they wanted to cut off a limb way up high on a tree in the back yard over there.Jeri's sister went up that ladder with my old electric chainsaw.I loaned them my big heavy duty safety belt that I bought at a pawn shop years ago. Jeri's sister chickened out.Jeri said, Hand me that damn chainsaw! After Jeri cut off that tree limb and came back down, I told her,,, I bet you can't wiggle out of that belt without unbuckling it first.Skinny Jeri wiggled out of that belt. cuhulin