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ThatDamnedPanda -> RE: BP Oil Spill : Who's Obama gonna call ? (6/5/2010 11:33:36 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Marini
At the end of the day, what if the oil leak does actually last for months?
I can fathom months, I can't fathom "years", but I think Professor Kaku, sounds like he knows
what he is talking about.
Unlike many others, I have NEVER fully trusted "the man" to tell me the truth, Professor Kaku does give us food for thought.
Well, there's good news and bad news, Marini.
The bad news is, it will last for months. Many months. Best case scenario is that the first of the two relief wells will be ready by early August, but that's not likely. We're into the hurricane season already, it's predicted to be a very bad one, and they need to shut down the drilling and pull the ships off the site when a major hurricane threatens. Then they need to wait out the storm, haul everything back out, and start over, and try to get as much drilling in as possible before the next hurricane. A major hurricane can delay the relief wells by as much as a week or so, maybe as long as a month if any equipment is damaged. It could easily be early September before the first relief well is even ready.
Then there's the question of how long it takes for the relief well to actually hit the borehole at 15,000 feet below the seafloor.Some people I know in the industry say they won't really be surprised if they get it on the first shot, but most of them think they may need at least 4 or 5 attempts to nail it. Probably a week for each re-do, so let's say another month.
So, mid-September is probably the earliest realistic date we can expect this leak to be stopped, and possibly a little or even a lot longer than that. It could be December, but I think that would be the outside. 3 or 4 months from now is a reasonable expectation, barring any more fuckups or acts of god.
The good news is, no - Kaku doesn't know what he's talking about. There's a reason that petroleum engineers don't do television interviews about physics stories, and it's the same reason physicists shouldn't do television interviews about oil spills. I'm surprised Kaku didn't know better than to shoot his mouth off like that, because his speculation that the relief wells will not work was very uninformed, needlessly sensational, and irresponsibly inaccurate. He should stick to what he knows.
The relief wells will work; there's no serious debate about that. This is proven and relatively simple technology. Nobody in the industry doubts this, and Kaku should be ashamed of himself for feeding this silly media frenzy. They may not work immediately, and it may take weeks or even a month or two to hit their target, but they will work, and the leak will not continue for years.
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