BP's Smoking Canon: The Documents

At mid-June estimates, BP could already be facing nearly $10 billion in fines alone for their Gulf oil catastrophe, over and above paying any costs for any clean up, remediation or compensation.

If we are lucky with the first relief well, this is about the half-way point. In 1979, the Ixtoc blowout spewed into the Gulf for over nine months before the fifth relief well finally worked. None of the other methods worked then either in 160 feet of water, well within human diving range at the time. Apparently depth is not the crucial issue it is made out to be.

Two years ago, BP was boasting to the oil industry that it had developed a nifty new sonar flow meter that can be attached to the outside of a pipe, up to 0.9 meters in diameter, in less than an hour to measure oil flows with "troublesome percentages of liquids or gas" mixtures. Now suddenly, they don't seem to have a clue.

I found this document on BP's own website:

Excerpt from p. 5 of BP's own Frontiers publication, August, 2008:

"... BP has identified that by combining sonar flow measurement with
additional measured parameters, such as pressure drop in a flow line,

both the liquid rate and the gas rate on a wet gas flow line can be
determined. BP has proven this additional breakthrough in practice and
expects to deploy the technique in the field by the end of this year.

It appears that measuring hydrocarbon flows which contain small but
troublesome percentages of liquids or gas may be less problematic in
the future thanks to BP's creative vision for sonar flow measurement."

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_an...

Every expert in the oil industry believes BP has a very good idea of exactly how much oil is spewing into the Gulf.

All the oil can be separated from the water and refined at local refineries. It is done all the time. BP will still have to pay fines and royalties on all the oil extracted, (recovered or not). That is why they have always maintained there are no oil plumes under the surface; low-balled all their estimates of how much is leaking and refused to release the video; then finally releasing the HD video; then lied about the HD video being available from the beginning to independent scientists trying to estimate the flow rate; then saying the drill area is too crowded for more ships; then burning off as much oil as possible.

The only thing an accurate flow meter can do now is to benefit the Gulf community by accurately measuring the legitimate fines and royalties due. BP is already facing up to $10 billion in fines in mid-June from violations of the Clean Water Act, as much as $4,300 per barrel leaked into US navigable waters, before any costs of remediation, rehabilitation, restoration, or compensation.

This video shows how the products actually work in the real world, all around the world.

Deep Sea, Calibration-Free, Clamp-on Sonar Oil Flow Metering –The Movie:

http://www.exprogroup.com/wp-content/uploads/FINAL_EXPROTOD.mov

CiDRA is the company mentioned in the August '08 BP Frontiers publication that developed the clamp-on sonar metering technology with BP two years ago:

http://www.cidra.com/

CiDRA Oil & Gas is now Expro Meters:

http://www.exprogroup.com/

They can be clamped on to pipes of up to 0.9 m in diameter. The riser is only 23 inches OD. There is still plenty of pipe to clamp on to, Tony.

By the way, there is also a really nice flange there too, in case you hadn't noticed. Just like you said you needed to stop the oil from leaking around the cap. Just cut the bolt heads off and weld a new top flange on if threads are too complicated. With, say, a new valve and riser connected to it.


Oil Booming School Needs a PTA:

The crude language video , Oil Booming School 101, is all over the internet:

(Caution: crude language used by crude oil workers.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx8kMXufu3w

No one in the major news media has bothered to even mention it, much less verify it. Satirist Harry Shearer played the entire audio portion, with minimal bleeps, on his radio show from New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, but no one seems to have done any follow up on its scandalous allegations.

In less than an hour, I managed to find genuine independent scientific documentation of the F***ing Works, vs. F***ing Doesn't Work claims made in the anonymous video.

The Oil and Hazardous Materials Simulated Environmental Test Tank, OHMSETT, is the only facility that offers full scale conditions for training in oil recovery from spills. It was built and operated by the EPA from 1974-1987, when responsibility was transferred to the Navy because it is located at the Naval Weapons Station.

Title VII of the Ocean Pollution Act of 1990 gave MMS the lead responsibility for reactivation of Ohmsett in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. The MMS was also charged with the continuing operation and maintenance of the facility as a national test facility. The MMS refurbished Ohmsett beginning in 1990 and reopened it for testing in 1992. Costs for the yearly operation and maintenance of Ohmsett are covered by the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.

They claim their wave generating machine and pool simulates actual ocean conditions. Watch the videos and see for yourself if it mimics typical wave conditions we see in televised coverage of oil spills. The last video shows how booms are configured to funnel oil to a collection device. How many times have any boom funnels been shown deployed on oil spills, much less anything, or any one actually collecting anything? All I ever see is very long, single lines of booms, usually with oil on both sides:

http://ohmsett.com/training.html

Here is an excerpt from a visiting environmental consultant during a series of tests by OHMSETT in 2003 observing booming with a secondary containment row:

http://www.pwsrcac.org/docs/d0032200.pdf

.. observation of the water surface clearly shows the difference in surface texture where the smoother surface oil is contained within the primary experimental zone on the right hand side of the boom compared to the more choppy water surface between the primary boom and the secondary containment boom in the center of the photograph. Also, note that there is absolutely no surface oil outside of the secondary containment zone on the left side of the photograph.

... little or no oil outside the secondary containment boom near the end of the test),

... Including the oil trapped within the secondary containment boom clearly minimizes the amount of oil that had escaped from the experimental system in earlier OHMSETT tests.
PDF p.37 = field notes and taped observations, p.10

BP – Beelzebub's Posse.