{"id":1623,"date":"2010-05-25T08:06:55","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T15:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=1623"},"modified":"2010-05-25T08:06:55","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T15:06:55","slug":"bp-the-audacity-of-greed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/05\/25\/bp-the-audacity-of-greed\/","title":{"rendered":"BP: The Audacity of Greed"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is just a small part of a large article that each of you ought to read in its entirety, including the comments.  Many thanks to my friend Diane for the link.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"BP-greed\"<\/a> The vast deepwater methane hydrate deposits of the Gulf of Mexico are an open secret in big energy circles. They represent the most tantalizing new frontier of unconventional energy – a potential source of hydrocarbon fuel thought to be twice as large as all the petroleum deposits ever known. <\/font><\/p>\n

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For the oil and gas industry, the substances are also known to be the primary hazard when drilling for deepwater oil. <\/font><\/p>\n

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Methane hydrates are volatile compounds – natural gas compressed into molecular cages of ice. They are stable in the extreme cold and crushing weight of deepwater, but are extremely dangerous when they build up inside the drill column of a well. If destabilized by heat or a decrease in pressure, methane hydrates can quickly expand to 164 times their volume. <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Survivors of the BP rig explosion <\/font><\/span>told interviewers<\/span><\/a> that right before the April 20 blast, workers had decreased the pressure in the drill column and applied heat to set the cement seal around the wellhead. Then a quickly expanding bubble of methane gas shot up the drill column before exploding on the platform on the ocean’s surface.<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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Even a solid steel pipe has little chance against a 164-fold expansion of volume – something that would render a man six feet six inches tall suddenly the height of the Eiffel Tower. <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Scientists are well aware of the awesome power of these strange hydrocarbons. A sudden large scale release of methane hydrates is believed to have caused a mass extinction 55 million years ago. Among planners concerned with mega-disasters, their sudden escape is considered to be a threat comparable to an asteroid strike or nuclear war. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a Livermore, California-based weapons design center,<\/font> <\/span>reports<\/a> that <\/font><\/span>when released on a large scale, methane hydrates can even cause tsunamis<\/span>. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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So it is not surprising to anyone who knows about the physics of these compounds that the Deepwater Horizon<\/span> rig was lost like a waterfly crumpled by a force of nature scientists are still just getting to know\u2026 [emphasis original<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Sott.net<\/a>><\/p>\n

The article and its comments thoroughly document not only the the extreme risks involved with methane hydrates, but also, that the risks had to be well known in advance to BP.  They knew that the area in which they were drilling was rich in methane hydrates.  They knew the about the blowouts methane hydrates have caused in the past.  They knew that reducing pressure and increasing temperature are the two behaviors most likely to cause a blow out.  In spite of that, they opted to replace the heavy drilling fluid with sea water and heat it to quicken the setting time for the cement used to seal the drill head.  To completely understand the magnitude of their greed, please read the entire article.<\/font><\/p>\n

They should never have been allowed to drill in such a high risk location, let alone do so without proper supervision.  We have GW \u201cNo Millionaire Left Behind\u201d Bush, Dick ‘\u201dHorney for Halliburton\u201d Cheney, and the Republican Party to thank for that.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is just a small part of a large article that each of you ought to read in its entirety, including the comments.  Many thanks to my friend Diane for the link. The vast deepwater methane hydrate deposits of the Gulf of Mexico are an open secret in big energy circles. They represent the most […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}