What's going on beneath the sea? A graphic explanation of the fight to shut off the oil leak

By Times-Picayune Staff

April 30, 2010, 7:42PM

Even as experts scramble to come up with a way of keeping the oil from the Deepwater Horizon well from continuing to flow freely into the Gulf of Mexico,

 

BP concedes that a relief well will eventually have to be drilled in order to successfully shut down the existing leaking well. The graphic below explains what's happening on the ocean floor, and how the relief well will work.

 

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/04/whats_going_on_beneath_the_sea.html

 

 

 

I'm too lazy to post the full article.

I'm shocked that people are actually bumping mc_squared completely fucking stupid "news stories" and not talking about something like this.

 

This is really starting to scare the shit out of me. I was going to make a thread about this but then I noticed someone else actually cares.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill

 

It could be at least a day before BP can make another attempt at putting a lid on a well spewing at least 200,000 gallons of crude into the Gulf each day.

It might be a long time until they stop the leak. It's ridiculous.

I think I saw that exact same graphic in Time :thinking:

 

This whole situation is disgusting. It's wasteful and it's doing horrors to the local environment :mean:

This is Obama's Katrina.

 

Speaking of which, everybody pray we don't get another hurricane in the Gulf while they're trying to clean this up!

It might be a long time until they stop the leak. It's ridiculous.

 

I don't want my Sarasota beach being effected! :veryangry2:

 

I would suggest releasing some of those oil eating bacteria but that bacteria does not eat this type of crude oil.

This is Obama's Katrina.

 

Speaking of which, everybody pray we don't get another hurricane in the Gulf while they're trying to clean this up!

 

Obama hates white people.

Clearly, the oil companies do NOT care whatsoever about the environment :( :angry: :facepalm:

^No shit? :\ Money, money, money...

I think it's safe to say the oil companies have done more to contain this oil spill than either of you guys have.

This is Obama's Katrina.

 

Speaking of which, everybody pray we don't get another hurricane in the Gulf while they're trying to clean this up!

 

mmm not really... but it is a disaster none the less. The difference with Katrina is that the government failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi... the 'governement' didn't run the rig with faulty equipment.... but Halliburton did :)as well as BP and the other fools involved.

 

 

 

I think it's safe to say the oil companies have done more to contain this oil spill than either of you guys have.

 

:laugh3: tou'che!

that is insane how many gallons of oil is leaking. I'm extremely surprised that this has not been as big news as it should have been. I mean I haven't been reading too much news lately (because it's depressing), but from what i've seen online or on tv, they haven't been taking about this as much as i would've thought.

It's because they're trying to protect Obama's approval numbers.

 

He just proposed more offshore drilling in the weeks prior to this disaster.

 

 

mmm not really... but it is a disaster none the less. The difference with Katrina is that the government failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi... the 'governement' didn't run the rig with faulty equipment.... but Halliburton did as well as BP and the other fools involved.

 

Halliburton just got a $500 billion no-bid contract from Obama. :P

It's because they're trying to protect Obama's approval numbers.

 

He just proposed more offshore drilling in the weeks prior to this disaster.

 

 

i love how the media protects obama.

 

yet if this happened on Bush's watch it would be all over the news as top story.

 

 

I'm not trying to protect bush, I just don't think it's fair to not show the bad things about an administration ust because you lean more towards one way

Okay, so this morning on the news...

 

BP's previous estimate was 5,000 barrels of oil leaking per day. 42 gallons per barrel, so that's 210,000 gallons each day.

 

NOW, after sticking that dinky tube equivalent of a straw in the pipe, that little thing is bringing up more than that much, just by itself. So the new estimates are 20,000 to 100,000 barrels per day (wide range, I know)... so that's between 840,000 to 4.2 million gallons per day. INSANE. Plus the news said the chemical dispersants being sprinkled on the water are much more toxic than originally indicated. Lovely.

It keeps getting worse. Now the oil is heading towards my state(Florida)

This whole situation is just terrible. I can't even imagine how much damage this will do to the ecosystem around the area as well as how long it will take to clean the whole mess up whenever oil finally stops leaking (which doesn't look like that's happening anytime soon).

 

I still can't believe how little news coverage this is getting... it seems like something that would be the main thing being talked about.

Everyone's been weirdly hush-hush about it. :/

Ima get some of that free obama oil when it comes to Flordia

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFjaQoOdJvI]YouTube- Nashville Tennessee Flood 2010[/ame]

 

There's other stuff going on in the world, too. And it hardly gets reported.

 

This oil better not swing around and hit my state or I'll be ticked.

I'm typically not an overly "emotional" person, but this just continues to be a more sad situation with each passing day.

 

I still don't understand why anyone thought it was a good idea to use that chemical dispersant. Even though it's toxic, let us pretend for a moment that it's not. The last time I checked, it was much easier to pick up a bowling ball than 1000 little pebbles. Why would they think it would be easier to clean up small bubbles of oil? The dispersant doesn't make the oil magically disappear, it's still there. Now it's just harder to clean up and will probably do more damage. And of course, that's even without any consideration for toxicity of the chemicals.

 

Argh.

Well the alternative would have been that the oil is sucked up by BP, refined, delivered to gas stations, and then burned in our cars.

 

Either way that stuff was going into the environment!

^ Which once again makes me wish that we had subway systems everywhere in the U.S.. I would love to take the subway instead of driving my car to work everyday. Plus I would be able to read/study/etc. (which I obviously can't do in the car), save time in the evening for other things, etc.