How about 350,000 barrels or more per day?

reply to post by loam


I did not read all the post in the thread before posing these numbers, so if they have been posted already I apologise.

I cannot dispute the size and scope of this disaster it is unimaginable and will take decades if not longer to recover from. However, I do doubt that 350,000 barrels of oil a day is spewing from one well is not anywhere close to reality.

The US produced roughly 5,000,000 million barrels of oil per day so this one well would equal seven percent of the entire US oil production.

Source

As of 2007 BP was the largest US oil producer at 654,000 barrels per day so the one well spewing 350,000 barrels per day would account for 54% of BP oil production.

Source

Average production per well in the US in only 9.4 barrels per day so this well is at 350,000 barrels per day is spewing 37,000 times more oil that the average well produces.

Source

Originally posted by RobertAntonWeishaupt
reply to post by loam

 

Consider the thickness of a coat of paint to the average thickness of the oil slick for a moment:

Paint (multiple coats) = .0003 inches
Average Oil Slick = .01 inches

We are not getting the real numbers from this underwater geyser.

I was actually going to say the opposite. The only problem I saw in the numbers was that I would guess that the oil slick thickness would be much "thinner" than paint.

So I did some searching and it isn't coinciding with the number you are putting here. Where did you get that number?

Here are some numbers:

Wiki

this one estimates it from as thin as 0.0000015 inches to 0.0000800 inches...both much thinner than your number and the "paint" number used in the OP.

Another source:
Source

Gives the thickness at 0.000001 meters...which is 0.00003937 inches. Which is consistent with the above range.



So I think that is the only mistake that the OP is making...over-estimating the thickness of the oil slick.

reply to post by MrFake


Why wouldn't BP want people scared? Fear leads to Anger. Anger leads to calls for action.

They are downplaying it to try and make themselves look merely incompetent as opposed to evil.

When people find out that their little screw up has the potential to destroy the sea, there is no accounting for what is going to happen.

Wow!! I knew it was bad but...WOW! If all that I am seeing here is true, we should all be very, very scared. This would well explain the media blackout and whatnot. Man, I am just beside myself right now. I hope to god that you are wrong and it's not so bad, for everyone's sake. Great thread. I can tell you put a lot of thought into this, and it is much appreciated by myself. Starring and flagging this right away. Not trying to change the topic, but one thing I've been wondering...does anyone have any idea how big this pocket of gas and oil is that is under the seabed? Has that info come out anywhere? Again, great thread!!

Originally posted by Morpheas
This image clearly shows where there is oil and I calculated 1 million bbl/day.
What is worst is that is just the surface oil used in the calculations.

4.bp.blogspot.com...

How about others try using this image?? I calculated about 15,000 sq/mi of oil and it is 28 days into the spill.

38px = 10mi

Anyone up to calculating bbl/day? I hope more will try as I'm curious what others come up with.


[edit on 6/11/2010 by Morpheas]

Originally posted by FoJAk
Wow!! I knew it was bad but...WOW! If all that I am seeing here is true, we should all be very, very scared. This would well explain the media blackout and whatnot. Man, I am just beside myself right now. I hope to god that you are wrong and it's not so bad, for everyone's sake. Great thread. I can tell you put a lot of thought into this, and it is much appreciated by myself. Starring and flagging this right away. Not trying to change the topic, but one thing I've been wondering...does anyone have any idea how big this pocket of gas and oil is that is under the seabed? Has that info come out anywhere? Again, great thread!!

You should be very very afraid my friend BP screwed the worlds oceans even after all oil is released you still have the gas release forever from "JBL Block 252" because BP tapped into a methane funnel leading probably into earth core. Thats why cementing is so important you must maintain the gas flow.


But think of it this way 100,000,000 Oil will eventually be absorbed sink wash up we'll be ok.....in a few years

enjoy a beer and not doom n gloom so much


this event i really hopes gather the world together that would be great

I can pretty much agree with you, although I wish I couldn't
With the magnitude of the spill so far, and the activities going on in the ocean floor, along with the problems they are having with the well head, the numbers don't look so good. I wrote an article about a week or so ago (day 41 I think) that did some of the flow rate math, and by the looks of what is happening now, the actual numbers are closer to yours than the MSMs. Here's a quip from my article:

Govt Story:
"It is only leaking 5000 barrels a day". That's only about 215,000 gallons a day (at that rate it would take 3 days to fill an Olympic size pool - approx 650,000 gallons). So they're looking at a displacement of about 13 Olympic size pools (about 8.6 million gallons) of total oil to date (after 40 days). And on the low end, that 1,000 barrel per day scenario only leaks 43,000 gallons a day (less than a gas tanker at the gas station). So for 1,000 barrels a day, that's less than 1.8 million gallons total spill ( it would take over 2 weeks to fill an Olympic pool at 1,000 barrels per day ), and they dump another 900,000 gallons of dispersant on it? That's 1 gallon of dispersant for every 2 gallons of oil!! AND CorExit 9500 IS TOXIC AT 2.6 ppm? . So if the well is leaking 5,000 barrels a day, and they have sprayed 900,000 gallons of dispersant, that calculates to about 500 barrels (nearly 21,000 gallons) of dispersant per day being dumped in the gulf. In their scenario, they have used 1 gallon of dispersant for every ten gallons of oil.
And with NOAA and other institutions saying there are multiple masses well over 20 miles long, over 10 miles wide, and 300 feet thick (some masses are 4 or 5 layers thick). Somehow the math doesn't equal the picture.
.
The 'Theorist' Story:
Now, if the well is leaking 70,000 barrels per day, that gives a figure of about 3,000,000 gallons per day (5 Olympic pools), and the dispersant ratio would be 1 gallon of dispersant for every 143 gallons of oil. It also indicates a total spill so far of over 120,000,000 (million) gallons (that's an equivalent of about 100 full Tankers all spilling at one time). The largest ship is a supertanker which can carry up to 2,000,000 gallons of oil (so 60 of them). So 120,000,000 gallons of Gulf sea water has beed displaced (more than likely now filling the Sigsbee Abyss, a 300+ mile trough 3 miles deep off the shores of NE Yucatan). The Mexican and American continental shelves will funnel oil flow into Cuba and around the tip of florida, where it will run into the North Atlantic Current.
Even on a conservative point of view, a 50,000 barrel per day spill is still 2,150,000 gallons per day with a total displacement of sea water at 92,450,000 gallons (or 142 Olympic pools) with another 900,000 gallons of dispersant (dispersants alone is almost enough to fill 2 Olympic size pools).
The horrifying part of this 'theory' is that over 3,000,000 gallons of Gulf Water is being displaced by oil and dispersants each day. That is about 5 Olympic swimming pools per day. It is scientifically impossible to have streams of oil 20 miles long and 10 miles wide and 300 feet thick from 5,000 barrels per day, so who is lying? The 'Theorists' or the corporatists and government? You've seen the pictures!
Something else not covered in the media is what happens to all of the evaporation of corexit (kerosene cocktail) and oil from the warming of the gulf? It gets caught up in the jetstream or prevailing wind and goes airborne. Remember now, we're in hurricane season, and they've predicted an unusually active season. I won't mention the word firestorm if you don't. Too many governmental actions have ended up in a scorched earth policy.
.
.
So, in fact, things are way beyond nasty and the damage so far is incomprehensible, and we've yet to see the devastation a month from now, or a year, or 10 years. I foresee at least a billion gallons of oil already lose.
.

please pass this on to every one you know.

www.youtube.com...

How many barrels per day was the rig taking out?

Whatever that figure is would be a very slow, controlled rate of oil being taken out.

You'd probably need to multiply it by 1000+ to get the actual figure now that it's just gushing out at the maximum rate possible.

Originally posted by Jim Scott
Let's take your number of 350,469 barrels per day.
We know from the news that the pipe is 19 inches in inside diameter.
How fast would it be flowing to escape at the 350K barrel rate?
Well, 350,469 barrels/day is 4.056 barrels per second.
That's 170.37 gallons per second.
There are 231 cubic inches per gallon.
That is a flow rate of 39,355.47 cu in per second.
There are 283.53 cu in in the first inch of pipe exit space for a 19 in diam pipe.
One cubic inch of surface of the exit pipe would have to move at 138.8 inches per sec,
or 11.567 ft/sec. That's 694 ft/min or 41641 ft/hr, which is 7.89 miles/hr.

I suggest to you that it is moving at least 15 to 30 ft/sec out of that pipe based
on the videos. If I am right, you can double or triple your dump number.

Looks like to me that there has been over a million barrels lost into the gulf PER DAY.

I'd have to disagree with your final hypothesis. You are basing this entirely on what "Appears" to be 15 - 30 ft/sec. That is based on a low res video streaming over a choppy internet connection.

The flow rates being discussed here are ridiculously high. The highest reported in that area from other wells is 30 000 barrels per day.

Originally posted by Morpheas

Originally posted by Morpheas
This image clearly shows where there is oil and I calculated 1 million bbl/day.
What is worst is that is just the surface oil used in the calculations.

4.bp.blogspot.com...

How about others try using this image?? I calculated about 15,000 sq/mi of oil and it is 28 days into the spill.

38px = 10mi

350,000 b/day is 14.7 million gallons a day or 612,500 gallons per hour (1 olymipc size pool every hour at that rate). I'm no math guru, but I would be interested in seeing the figures of what mass an area 20 miles x 5 miles x 300 feet would be.

Anyone up to calculating bbl/day? I hope more will try as I'm curious what others come up with.


[edit on 6/11/2010 by Morpheas]

Did some more digging for paint thickness.

Paint Thickness

Seems like in general paint has a thickness of 4 - 8 mil or 0.004 - 0.008 inches.

So using the coverage of paint for your calculations...you are using a thickness of 0.008 when the thickness should be more in the range of 0.00003 - 0.00004.



So...if I recalc the numbers....which I will probably do wrong because I am in a hurry.

The volume of 1 square mile at 0.00003 inches thickness would be (convert 1 square mile into sq. inches to get 4,014,489,600 square inches ( 1 sq mile = 27,878,400 square feet = 4,014,489,600 square inches )

So 4,014,489,600 square inches * 0.00003 inches = 120434.688 cubic inches.

Convert cubic inchest to gallons: 521.362 gal (U.S. Liquid gallons)
Conversion Source

to cover connecticut: 521.362 times 5,544 = 2890430.928 gallons

Convert to barrels: 2890430.928 divided by 42 = 68819.784

So with that number it would be: 2293 barrels a day.



That sounds so off of the number you had....maybe I screwed up somewhere. But that is just on the surface...not taking into account anything under the water. And that is using a 0.00003 thickness...which it wouldn't be even all across the slick.

If I use the larger thickness of 0.00008...it would come out to 6117 barrels of oil a day in that first 30 days.

So if you use that thickness....the governments estimate of 5k barrels a day isn't too off. But that is only looking at what is VISIBLE.

I dont' trust the governments or BPs numbers....but thought I would run the numbers using a more correct thickness.

I checked my numbers using the 0.004 inch thickness of paint...and it comes out to 305865 barrels a day...so i think my calculations are right.

Please...someone tell me if they see an error in my numbers.

[edit on 11-6-2010 by OutKast Searcher]

To answer my own question:

those rigs take about 40,000 to 50,000 barrels per day when in full production.

That's clearly going to be a fraction of the amount thats spewing out now - it's got to be over 1 million barrels per day easily!!


Edit: 1,000,000 barrels per day = 11.5 barrels per second - is that a bit high?

Edit 2: I'm sure i've seen somewhere the pressure at the well head. If you know the pressure and the diameter of the pipe, then it should be possible to calculate the volume of oil being pushed out per second?

Anyone clever enough?

[edit on 11-6-2010 by Power_Semi]

My two cents based on info the MSM puts out:

news.yahoo.com...

Gov't estimate is as high as 210,00 gallons per day (5,000 barrels)

www.reuters.com...

MSM reports BP currently collecting 756,000 gallons per day (18,000 barrels)

Anticipates collecting 1,176,000 gallons per day (28,000 barrels) by next week,

and states collection at 2,100,000 gallons per day (50,000 barrels) by mid-July.

[edit on 11-6-2010 by gunslng44]

www.1728.com...

here you go.. just need the feet/sec and you set.

I always hate it when people are so damn smug. Since the start of the oil spill, I feel like people want to shoot down comparisons and worry. I made the comment that it was bigger than the Exxon Valdez some 20 days in and was immediately chastised for such a comment. "OF COURSE IT ISN'T!!"

I did the math back then. BP was saying 5,000, other sources were saying some 90,000 barrels per day. So, even at 15,000, which is less than half-way, but a more fair assessment at 20 days out, it had surpassed the E-V disaster.

15,000 b. x 20 days = 300,000 barrels

Exxon Valdez was 11,000,000 gallons / 42 = 261,000 barrels

If the OP is right, then they are creating an Exxon Valdez size disaster every day.

But, the ocean is very, very big!

Originally posted by FoJAk
Wow!! I knew it was bad but...WOW! If all that I am seeing here is true, we should all be very, very scared. This would well explain the media blackout and whatnot. Man, I am just beside myself right now. I hope to god that you are wrong and it's not so bad, for everyone's sake. Great thread. I can tell you put a lot of thought into this, and it is much appreciated by myself. Starring and flagging this right away. Not trying to change the topic, but one thing I've been wondering...does anyone have any idea how big this pocket of gas and oil is that is under the seabed? Has that info come out anywhere? Again, great thread!!

If the MSM doesn't want us to worry about this, then why would they do This ?
If they are now in the planning stages of evacuating coastal residents in 3 states, then what do they know that we don't?

Originally posted by VonDutch
www.1728.com...

here you go.. just need the feet/sec and you set.

Which nobody here knows. You cant watch those videos and estimate a flow rate. Whats the frame rate of those videos? Whats the dimension of the pipe its flowing from? Is there a bernoulli effect inside the pipe due to the fact that its bent and filled with foreign material from the top kill effort previously? Have the armchair estimators factored into the equation the buoyancy of the hydrocarbons exiting the pipe adding to their upward velocity?

reply to post by loam


You should check out both of my threads I started on this topic. I believe the reason for all the lies is the same as you, and the reason they keep letting a little more reality out each day, is they dont want to panic people with the truth about how horrendous this all is.

I believe the scientists and oil experts are correct and there is a oil volanoe at the bottom of the Gulf that BP has unleashed. It is called the Tiber field, which is a migration channel. The only other one to ever be drilled is in Saudi Arabia, and has been spewing millions of gallons of oil a day for 70 years.

check out my threads:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

People need to know the truth and be prepared for the worst.

The internal diameter of the pipe is 20 inches.

The psi can be up to 3800.