10 ms·

Is the BP Gusher Unstoppable?

167 points by mbateman 16y ago

russell 16y ago
It may be much worse than we thought. The well pipe is nearing collapse under the seabed and efforts to cap it from the top will eventually fail.
- ars 16y ago
  Interesting how it went from a wild guess, to an article, then "may be", and now "is nearing collapse" and "will fail". Rumors.
  - JacobAldridge 16y ago
    It's not rumors. Some guy (gal?) named dougr said so, and he is "seemingly very knowledgable". Q.E.D.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    Good point. But to be fair, a lot of what BP has seemed to be doing is making guesses. Educated guesses, based on some observations and known facts. But still, guesses just the same. At best, estimates.
  - joubert 16y ago
    And that's why the company should have been transparent about the spill from early on.
btilly 16y ago
Short summary, the integrity of the well seems to be compromised below the layer we can reach. Therefore attempting to cap it will just cause it to leak out the sea floor below anything we can reach. The only choice is to let the oil out and try to catch it. However this will erode the already compromised well structure. At that point it is a race between erosion and the relief wells, which hopefully will relieve the pressure on the existing well. If the relief wells fail to get there in time, there is a real possibility of the sea floor collapsing and letting the entire oil pocket out. The potential oil spill if that happens could be up to 2.5 billion barrels.
- nw 16y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, that equals 10,000 times the volume spilled by the Exxon Valdez (250k barrels).
- nitrogen 16y ago
  If the sea floor above the pocket is so fragile, what was to stop this disaster from occurring naturally some day, without having ever drilled?
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    That sort of thing may very well have happened in the past. And it probably sucked being a fish for quite a while. And like many other bad things that have occurred quite naturally in the past, we'll suffer no matter what or who's causing the disaster. When the Toba caldera blew last time, for example, we almost got wiped out.
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      And like many other bad things that have occurred quite naturally in the past, we'll suffer no matter what or who's causing the disaster. So la-de-da let's go around doing things that might cause more of these things to happen, after all it's natural? Sounds a lot like the "everything natural=goodness" fuzzy thinking certain people are guilty of. Lots of bad things are "natural" yet it's still a very smart policy to prevent them. Contracting STDs is natural. Tooth decay and abscesses are natural. Breaking your neck in a fall is natural. I'm still going to practice safe sex, brush and floss my teeth, and use a safety harness while climbing. A good many resources just don't make the cost/benefit cut. Self destructively promiscuous people are a readily available resource for getting sex, but they are also a good way to irreversibly get stuck with herpes.
  - jonah 16y ago
    From my reading, it's flow that's causing the erosion. We've punctured the dam. Consider an earth dam holding in a lake. As long as the water's sitting behind the dam, not much is going to happen but as soon as a little crack appears or a bit of water begins pouring over the top, it starts eroding - carrying away bits of the dam. As the hole gets bigger, the flow increases which accelerates the erosion. Now picture the oil eroding a hole in the casing and surrounding rock/silt/etc. Here's a visual from a recent natural disaster: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/landslide_lake_in_pakistan.html#photo38 http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/landslide_lake_in_p...
starkfist 16y ago
This MotherJones article is entirely based on an anonymous comment on another blog, which is sort of interesting in and of itself.
- freescale 16y ago
  And that an article in MotherJones based on an anonymous comment on another blog is currently #2 on HackerNews is simply dispiriting.
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    Yep, especially since BP's presentation to Congress [1] would indicate that that anonymous commenter doesn't have a complete understanding of what's going on. [1]: http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100527/BP.Presentation.pdf http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100527/BP.Presen...
    - melvin 16y ago
      Nothing that has occurred since the incident has given me the impression that BP has a complete understanding of what's going on.
      - megablast 16y ago
        Or, more importantly, the willingness to admit that fact, or to admit the truth. Initially they decried all the people who suggested the flow was much larger than their estimates. Then, more and more sources come out suggesting it. And just recently, they have admitted it might be true. This seems to be modus operandi for companies these days. Deny everything, then weeks later come up with your own sources suggesting exactly the same thing, when the issue has died down.
      - billswift 16y ago
        Nothing that has happened in the last 40 years has given me any reason to believe that anybody, or even everybody in aggregate, has a complete understanding of much of anything that is going on.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
houseabsolute 16y ago
Not so quick question: if this indeed does happen could more extraordinary measures possibly fix the problem? For example: Bombs Bombs \\ | // --------|-------- ########|######## Or is it basically oil ocean forever? And: how catastrophic of a situation is this? Not, I would guess, an existential risk. Could it be measured in terms of percentage of world GDP that will be lost trying to fix or mitigate the symptoms? And if so, what approximate percentage would that be? Another nice thing would be if it could be measured in terms of the overall historical benefit of offshore drilling. Edit: I'm not really suggesting bombs; that's just something off the top my head. The main idea is that I want to know if there is any potential mitigation if the story is true? And just how bad is it if there isn't?
- micmcg 16y ago
  I don't see how you could possibly consider the catastrophic nature of the situation only in terms of financial cost and not environmental. No amount of money can bring back extinct species.
  - houseabsolute 16y ago
    I care more about my fellow man's skin than some extinct species. All other things being equal extinctions are bad, but in my world it's lower priority than the losses that humans face (at some level of conversion). Anyway, if it makes you feel better, you can try to come up with an extinction's dollar value and add that in to your estimate. That sort of thing is perfectly valid. I suggest: "How much money would I pay (or advocate to be paid) to prevent this extinction?" Then do that for each extinction you believe is likely.
    - thaumaturgy 16y ago
      Hm, that's an interesting way of looking at it, to be polite. So, how much would you pay to prevent me from, say, burning the Mona Lisa? Or pulverizing the Statue of David? Or bombing the Sistine Chapel? I don't think it's valid at all to assume that everything can have a dollar value associated with it; that would mean that the word "priceless" would be meaningless. ...and I happen to think that the value of life in the Gulf is pretty priceless.
viraptor 16y ago
Ok - I haven't been following this event that much so far. Can someone tell me why the simplest solution of limiting the leak effects is not possible - namely building a large tunnel going from the surface to the leak point, making a space where the oil can safely leak, while it's being transported away? Is it the depth? area? size of the flow?
- jbarciauskas 16y ago
  I don't know but I imagine that the complexity of building said tunnel is much higher than the alternative that is currently being pursued - relief wells and the "bottom kill". Building things in water is many many times more complicated than the same things not in water. Which is why deep sea drilling is so controversial to begin with.
- brown9-2 16y ago
  The leak is 5000 feet below the surface of the ocean. Water is heavy. 5000 feet of it is a whole lot of pressure that such a tunnel would have to withstand. The "simplest solution" is often one that is completely impractical given the facts.
  - giardini 16y ago
    No, No! Neither "tunnel" nor well need to withstand the pressure of 5000 feet of water. Reason is that the well (tunnel) is always filled with either water or drilling mud (roughly the same density as water) so the inside and outside pressure on the drilling pipe are the same. The pressure differences are not significant until/unless drilling into an oil or gas pocket. Even then the pocket must have a pressure significantly greater than that of the 5000 feet of water to be any problem. But that's what blowout preventers are for.
    - SapphireSun 16y ago
      Don't forget that it's not only the lateral pressure you have to deal with, you have to have pipes that can not crumple under their own weight and simultaneously withstand extremely high torques due to ocean currents.
codingthewheel 16y ago
The largest two oil spills in recorded history: Lakeview Gusher: around 9 million barrels, est. Gulf War Spill: around 6 to 11 million barrels Deepwater Horizon has a ways to go. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill#Largest_oil_spills http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill#Largest_oil_spills
- yardie 16y ago
  #1 On land, relatively easy to cleanup, but expensive #2 On land, relatively easy to cleanup, but expensive #3 5000 ft underwater....expensive
- ZachPruckowski 16y ago
  According to that chart, it's halfway to the lower-end estimates of the Gulf War Spill, and we're barely halfway done with the spill in the best-case scenario.
sosorry 16y ago
What if we just sank something really big and made of concrete on top of the oil leak, like a cruise ship or an aircraft carrier? Just something really really heavy, and wide enough to cover the hole by a large margin.
- chronomex 16y ago
  I can't see that making a good enough seal with the seafloor to be a viable solution.
- nevinera 16y ago
  So you have this huge, powerful, not particularly sturdy hose sticking out of the middle of your yard. You decide that you need to stop it up, so you place the top of a bird-bath over it, upside down. How well do you think that will work? The sea floor is not made of bedrock.
ck2 16y ago
2.5 Million gallons per day. Years after the news stops reporting it in a couple months, the wildlife will never recover. Relief wells must be made MANDATORY or we've learned nothing and it will happen again. BP's deepwater Atlantis is poised to do the same thing in our lifetimes.
jurjenh 16y ago
So the direct consequence currently is that millions of barrels are venting directly into the gulf. I'm not too clued up on crude oil, but as far as I'm aware, oil is less dense than water, thus rises. Gulf currents will dissipate this as seen from aerial photos, so without containment, oil will end up in a lot more places than just the gulf. How is the oil flow being contained, and how effective is this - remembering there may be billions of barrels to be contained... What percentage of the oil will be sub-surface - a lot harder to contain. And how can this be contained? What are the flow-on effects of a possible sea-floor collapse and how much of an impact will this have on the structure of the gulf? And then the overriding question of all - is it worth it? If there is a relatively easy way to extract crude from the water, it may in fact be more economically feasible to extract the oil by destroying the well than to repair the well itself. Of course, none of this is taking into account the environmental impact...
- itgoon 16y ago
  The problem with the underwater plumes is that they can't be contained. While you may have the image of an underwater oilslick, it isn't - the oil can be measured in parts per million (you might not even notice if you had a glass of it). The problem with those plumes is that bacteria eats the oil, and then breeds. Those organisms use up the oxygen in the water, leaving a dead zone unfit for life. There was already a decent sized dead zone from the Mississippi, but this has the potential to dwarf it.
varjag 16y ago
How about U.S. government finally uses some of it's many nukes for good of the world? No, not on BP headquarters, but blast it in proximity to kill the well?
Jim_Neath 16y ago
+1 for the use of the word "Gusher"
quizbiz 16y ago
What does a well look like under water?
jpdbaugh 16y ago
BP definitely understands, better than anyone else who pretends to what is going on. The problem is that what is really going on is incredibly scary proposition. The truth is that from the beginning the only real way to fix this is with relief wells which they are in the process of drilling. The problem with the relief well is that it takes about 6 months to implement. Do you really expect BP to come out with that to the American people? I have this on good authority by a petroleum engineer in a rival oil company. Believe me or not but I think that the people in the oil industry probably no better about how to fix this problem than Obama or anyone else in government who are just going to get in the way. First, I do not at all agree with offshore drilling, however it bothers me that people assume that BP is holding out or that this is really an easy thing to fix. They aren't because letting the disaster continue will destroy their company and it isn't easy considering they are composed of people who studied petroleum engineering and actually no what they are doing. Johnny's silly, uninformed ideas aren't going to work either. Hell, the petroleum engineer I know also said that Russia's idea of nuking the leak would be the quickest way to fix but the government, or sane people, wouldn't allow that. The bottom line is that we should never have been drilling in the first place. This spill is terrible but it happened and we have to deal with it. It bothers me though that people really think BP isn't doing the best they can and has the best people in the world working on this. The entire oil industry is helping them. The government and other entities should worry about supporting them and helping the people affected by this cope with the fallout. Leave the technical details to the professionals because everyone else ideas are uninformed, will slow things down, and will not work. Only a relief well will and thats 4 months away so why not worry about helping the people of the golf? The truly sad thing is that Americans will still get up tomorrow and drive their gas guzzling SUVs 2 miles to work instead of riding bike and those bullet trains and public transportation efforts are still decades away...
- Tekhne 16y ago
  > ... Americans will still get up tomorrow and drive their gas guzzling SUVs ... Let's say that I'm an American with a gas guzzling SUV. For the sake of discussion, what would you suggest are my better alternatives (taking into account the money I've already invested in the SUV)? How would those alternatives help fix the current BP problem? I'm not trying to be contrarian. I would like to start a discussion here.
jim_dot 16y ago
this post seems to suggest that Dougr's ideas that oil is escaping into the surrounding rock are wrong: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6611#more http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6611#more

167 points by mbateman 16y ago

It may be much worse than we thought. The well pipe is nearing collapse under the seabed and efforts to cap it from the top will eventually fail.

ars 16y ago
Interesting how it went from a wild guess, to an article, then "may be", and now "is nearing collapse" and "will fail". Rumors.
- JacobAldridge 16y ago
  It's not rumors. Some guy (gal?) named dougr said so, and he is "seemingly very knowledgable". Q.E.D.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  Good point. But to be fair, a lot of what BP has seemed to be doing is making guesses. Educated guesses, based on some observations and known facts. But still, guesses just the same. At best, estimates.
- joubert 16y ago
  And that's why the company should have been transparent about the spill from early on.

btilly 16y ago

Short summary, the integrity of the well seems to be compromised below the layer we can reach. Therefore attempting to cap it will just cause it to leak out the sea floor below anything we can reach. The only choice is to let the oil out and try to catch it. However this will erode the already compromised well structure. At that point it is a race between erosion and the relief wells, which hopefully will relieve the pressure on the existing well. If the relief wells fail to get there in time, there is a real possibility of the sea floor collapsing and letting the entire oil pocket out. The potential oil spill if that happens could be up to 2.5 billion barrels.

nw 16y ago
If I'm not mistaken, that equals 10,000 times the volume spilled by the Exxon Valdez (250k barrels).
nitrogen 16y ago
If the sea floor above the pocket is so fragile, what was to stop this disaster from occurring naturally some day, without having ever drilled?
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  That sort of thing may very well have happened in the past. And it probably sucked being a fish for quite a while. And like many other bad things that have occurred quite naturally in the past, we'll suffer no matter what or who's causing the disaster. When the Toba caldera blew last time, for example, we almost got wiped out.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    And like many other bad things that have occurred quite naturally in the past, we'll suffer no matter what or who's causing the disaster. So la-de-da let's go around doing things that might cause more of these things to happen, after all it's natural? Sounds a lot like the "everything natural=goodness" fuzzy thinking certain people are guilty of. Lots of bad things are "natural" yet it's still a very smart policy to prevent them. Contracting STDs is natural. Tooth decay and abscesses are natural. Breaking your neck in a fall is natural. I'm still going to practice safe sex, brush and floss my teeth, and use a safety harness while climbing. A good many resources just don't make the cost/benefit cut. Self destructively promiscuous people are a readily available resource for getting sex, but they are also a good way to irreversibly get stuck with herpes.
- jonah 16y ago
  From my reading, it's flow that's causing the erosion. We've punctured the dam. Consider an earth dam holding in a lake. As long as the water's sitting behind the dam, not much is going to happen but as soon as a little crack appears or a bit of water begins pouring over the top, it starts eroding - carrying away bits of the dam. As the hole gets bigger, the flow increases which accelerates the erosion. Now picture the oil eroding a hole in the casing and surrounding rock/silt/etc. Here's a visual from a recent natural disaster: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/landslide_lake_in_pakistan.html#photo38 http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/landslide_lake_in_p...

starkfist 16y ago

This MotherJones article is entirely based on an anonymous comment on another blog, which is sort of interesting in and of itself.

freescale 16y ago
And that an article in MotherJones based on an anonymous comment on another blog is currently #2 on HackerNews is simply dispiriting.
- thaumaturgy 16y ago
  Yep, especially since BP's presentation to Congress [1] would indicate that that anonymous commenter doesn't have a complete understanding of what's going on. [1]: http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100527/BP.Presentation.pdf http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100527/BP.Presen...
  - melvin 16y ago
    Nothing that has occurred since the incident has given me the impression that BP has a complete understanding of what's going on.
    - megablast 16y ago
      Or, more importantly, the willingness to admit that fact, or to admit the truth. Initially they decried all the people who suggested the flow was much larger than their estimates. Then, more and more sources come out suggesting it. And just recently, they have admitted it might be true. This seems to be modus operandi for companies these days. Deny everything, then weeks later come up with your own sources suggesting exactly the same thing, when the issue has died down.
    - billswift 16y ago
      Nothing that has happened in the last 40 years has given me any reason to believe that anybody, or even everybody in aggregate, has a complete understanding of much of anything that is going on.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

houseabsolute 16y ago

Not so quick question: if this indeed does happen could more extraordinary measures possibly fix the problem? For example: Bombs Bombs \\ | // --------|-------- ########|######## Or is it basically oil ocean forever? And: how catastrophic of a situation is this? Not, I would guess, an existential risk. Could it be measured in terms of percentage of world GDP that will be lost trying to fix or mitigate the symptoms? And if so, what approximate percentage would that be? Another nice thing would be if it could be measured in terms of the overall historical benefit of offshore drilling. Edit: I'm not really suggesting bombs; that's just something off the top my head. The main idea is that I want to know if there is any potential mitigation if the story is true? And just how bad is it if there isn't?

micmcg 16y ago
I don't see how you could possibly consider the catastrophic nature of the situation only in terms of financial cost and not environmental. No amount of money can bring back extinct species.
- houseabsolute 16y ago
  I care more about my fellow man's skin than some extinct species. All other things being equal extinctions are bad, but in my world it's lower priority than the losses that humans face (at some level of conversion). Anyway, if it makes you feel better, you can try to come up with an extinction's dollar value and add that in to your estimate. That sort of thing is perfectly valid. I suggest: "How much money would I pay (or advocate to be paid) to prevent this extinction?" Then do that for each extinction you believe is likely.
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    Hm, that's an interesting way of looking at it, to be polite. So, how much would you pay to prevent me from, say, burning the Mona Lisa? Or pulverizing the Statue of David? Or bombing the Sistine Chapel? I don't think it's valid at all to assume that everything can have a dollar value associated with it; that would mean that the word "priceless" would be meaningless. ...and I happen to think that the value of life in the Gulf is pretty priceless.

viraptor 16y ago

Ok - I haven't been following this event that much so far. Can someone tell me why the simplest solution of limiting the leak effects is not possible - namely building a large tunnel going from the surface to the leak point, making a space where the oil can safely leak, while it's being transported away? Is it the depth? area? size of the flow?

jbarciauskas 16y ago
I don't know but I imagine that the complexity of building said tunnel is much higher than the alternative that is currently being pursued - relief wells and the "bottom kill". Building things in water is many many times more complicated than the same things not in water. Which is why deep sea drilling is so controversial to begin with.
brown9-2 16y ago
The leak is 5000 feet below the surface of the ocean. Water is heavy. 5000 feet of it is a whole lot of pressure that such a tunnel would have to withstand. The "simplest solution" is often one that is completely impractical given the facts.
- giardini 16y ago
  No, No! Neither "tunnel" nor well need to withstand the pressure of 5000 feet of water. Reason is that the well (tunnel) is always filled with either water or drilling mud (roughly the same density as water) so the inside and outside pressure on the drilling pipe are the same. The pressure differences are not significant until/unless drilling into an oil or gas pocket. Even then the pocket must have a pressure significantly greater than that of the 5000 feet of water to be any problem. But that's what blowout preventers are for.
  - SapphireSun 16y ago
    Don't forget that it's not only the lateral pressure you have to deal with, you have to have pipes that can not crumple under their own weight and simultaneously withstand extremely high torques due to ocean currents.

codingthewheel 16y ago

The largest two oil spills in recorded history: Lakeview Gusher: around 9 million barrels, est. Gulf War Spill: around 6 to 11 million barrels Deepwater Horizon has a ways to go. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill#Largest_oil_spills http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill#Largest_oil_spills

yardie 16y ago
#1 On land, relatively easy to cleanup, but expensive #2 On land, relatively easy to cleanup, but expensive #3 5000 ft underwater....expensive
ZachPruckowski 16y ago
According to that chart, it's halfway to the lower-end estimates of the Gulf War Spill, and we're barely halfway done with the spill in the best-case scenario.

sosorry 16y ago

What if we just sank something really big and made of concrete on top of the oil leak, like a cruise ship or an aircraft carrier? Just something really really heavy, and wide enough to cover the hole by a large margin.

chronomex 16y ago
I can't see that making a good enough seal with the seafloor to be a viable solution.
nevinera 16y ago
So you have this huge, powerful, not particularly sturdy hose sticking out of the middle of your yard. You decide that you need to stop it up, so you place the top of a bird-bath over it, upside down. How well do you think that will work? The sea floor is not made of bedrock.

ck2 16y ago

2.5 Million gallons per day. Years after the news stops reporting it in a couple months, the wildlife will never recover. Relief wells must be made MANDATORY or we've learned nothing and it will happen again. BP's deepwater Atlantis is poised to do the same thing in our lifetimes.

jurjenh 16y ago

So the direct consequence currently is that millions of barrels are venting directly into the gulf. I'm not too clued up on crude oil, but as far as I'm aware, oil is less dense than water, thus rises. Gulf currents will dissipate this as seen from aerial photos, so without containment, oil will end up in a lot more places than just the gulf. How is the oil flow being contained, and how effective is this - remembering there may be billions of barrels to be contained... What percentage of the oil will be sub-surface - a lot harder to contain. And how can this be contained? What are the flow-on effects of a possible sea-floor collapse and how much of an impact will this have on the structure of the gulf? And then the overriding question of all - is it worth it? If there is a relatively easy way to extract crude from the water, it may in fact be more economically feasible to extract the oil by destroying the well than to repair the well itself. Of course, none of this is taking into account the environmental impact...

itgoon 16y ago
The problem with the underwater plumes is that they can't be contained. While you may have the image of an underwater oilslick, it isn't - the oil can be measured in parts per million (you might not even notice if you had a glass of it). The problem with those plumes is that bacteria eats the oil, and then breeds. Those organisms use up the oxygen in the water, leaving a dead zone unfit for life. There was already a decent sized dead zone from the Mississippi, but this has the potential to dwarf it.

varjag 16y ago

How about U.S. government finally uses some of it's many nukes for good of the world? No, not on BP headquarters, but blast it in proximity to kill the well?

Jim_Neath 16y ago

+1 for the use of the word "Gusher"

quizbiz 16y ago

What does a well look like under water?

jpdbaugh 16y ago

BP definitely understands, better than anyone else who pretends to what is going on. The problem is that what is really going on is incredibly scary proposition. The truth is that from the beginning the only real way to fix this is with relief wells which they are in the process of drilling. The problem with the relief well is that it takes about 6 months to implement. Do you really expect BP to come out with that to the American people? I have this on good authority by a petroleum engineer in a rival oil company. Believe me or not but I think that the people in the oil industry probably no better about how to fix this problem than Obama or anyone else in government who are just going to get in the way. First, I do not at all agree with offshore drilling, however it bothers me that people assume that BP is holding out or that this is really an easy thing to fix. They aren't because letting the disaster continue will destroy their company and it isn't easy considering they are composed of people who studied petroleum engineering and actually no what they are doing. Johnny's silly, uninformed ideas aren't going to work either. Hell, the petroleum engineer I know also said that Russia's idea of nuking the leak would be the quickest way to fix but the government, or sane people, wouldn't allow that. The bottom line is that we should never have been drilling in the first place. This spill is terrible but it happened and we have to deal with it. It bothers me though that people really think BP isn't doing the best they can and has the best people in the world working on this. The entire oil industry is helping them. The government and other entities should worry about supporting them and helping the people affected by this cope with the fallout. Leave the technical details to the professionals because everyone else ideas are uninformed, will slow things down, and will not work. Only a relief well will and thats 4 months away so why not worry about helping the people of the golf? The truly sad thing is that Americans will still get up tomorrow and drive their gas guzzling SUVs 2 miles to work instead of riding bike and those bullet trains and public transportation efforts are still decades away...

Tekhne 16y ago
> ... Americans will still get up tomorrow and drive their gas guzzling SUVs ... Let's say that I'm an American with a gas guzzling SUV. For the sake of discussion, what would you suggest are my better alternatives (taking into account the money I've already invested in the SUV)? How would those alternatives help fix the current BP problem? I'm not trying to be contrarian. I would like to start a discussion here.

jim_dot 16y ago

this post seems to suggest that Dougr's ideas that oil is escaping into the surrounding rock are wrong: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6611#more http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6611#more