840,000 gallons of oil from a corroded Enbridge Energy pipeline have leaked into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River near Battle Creek this past week. More specifically, “The oil is moving from Talmadge Creek into the Kalamazoo River, which flows from near the city of Battle Creek into Lake Michigan.” Swell.

Edward Vielmetti, friend of New Orleans and lead blogger at AnnArbor.com has been doing yeoman’s work staying on top of the story and associated political foibles as it unfolds. Follow Ed on Twitter for up to the minute information. For more, I suggest you follow Canadian news on this story because a) Enbridge Energy is a Canadian company and b) there’s a certain sheen, shall we say, to the quality of FoxMSNBCNN reporting: CBC News says 3.7 million litres while CNN says 19,500 barrels. Been there, done that, right?

Some other things that ought to sound terribly familiar to Gulf Coast residents. Here’s #2: Michigan oil spill: U.S. warned Canadian company about pipeline monitoring

3) Expect the same old disheartening song and dance from the Yankee right. The Michigan Messenger reports:

State Sen. Glenn Anderson (D-Westland) has introduced legislation in the State Senate to lift a cap on costs oil companies have to pay for clean ups associated with their pipelines.

Anderson told Jack Ebling on WILS 1320 AM radio Wednesday that right now, state law caps the damages a company is liable for at $15 million.

But the Senate, which is dominated by Republicans, adjourned for a mid-summer break without acting on Anderson’s legislation.

“They chose to do nothing with it,” Anderson said. “They passed a resolution that called on officials from the federal government to the locals to do all they can. That’s nothing but talk.”

3a) Chicago’s Mayor Daley: Michigan oil spill worse than Asian carp so “Michigan better do something about the investigation, the criminal and civil investigation. Who’s paying for it, and who had the oil spill in the Kalamazoo River, because it’s flowing into Lake Michigan.” Blarghblarblar.

And 4) @Enbridge_PR “Lake Michigan is not as big as the Gulf of Mexico, but we’re gonna try to beat those filthy Brits at their own game! @bpglobalpr” Right down to the fake Twitter account.

Wake me up when it’s all over, ferchrissakes.

… scientists say it could take decades to comprehend the toll the last 100 days took on wildlife — from sea turtles to bacteria.

Currently, oil covers approximately 638 miles (1,026 kilometers) of Gulf shoreline, according to the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center

… can only hope that about 35 years from now, when these hatchlings reach maturity, they will still have the same instinct to return to the beaches where their mothers nested to lay eggs.

The size of the “dead zones,” where low oxygen levels cause marine life to languish and die, may grow in the coming days … [But] “the Gulf, with the warm temperature and the sunshine, can break down the oil really fast,” [University of Texas Marine Science Institute marine researcher Zhanfei] Liu said. “It spreads out, the bacteria attacks the oil really fast. This is not like the oil spill in Alaska.”

Undoubtedly, hurricanes will visit the Gulf within the next 100 days — hurricane season won’t end until the beginning of December … But scientists cannot predict how a hurricane might disperse the oil.

Put differently, our fate is similar to that of Joel, Crow and Tom Servo, trapped on a spaceship and forced to watch this low-budget horror movie play out until god knows when.

Image from Photoshop of Horrors: Wired Readers Show BP How It’s Done

]]> http://vatul.net/blog/index.php/4754/feed/ 0 http://vatul.net/blog/index.php/4748/ http://vatul.net/blog/index.php/4748/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:26:00 +0000 Maitri http://vatul.net/blog/?p=4748 100 FRAKING DAYS.

Christian Science Monitor | From ‘static kill’ to ‘bottom kill’: next steps in Gulf oil spill – best explanation of the Static Kill followed by Bottom Kill methodology I’ve seen yet.

[Bottom kill] will come after “static kill,” which has a tentative start date of next Monday. Static kill would deposit the same mixture of materials into the top of the well. Unlike “top kill” in late May, which employed the same tactic, static kill is considered a more realistic solution to preventing oil flow because the container cap, installed in mid-July, is providing a tighter seal around the wellhead and therefore won’t allow oil and gas to escape.

And why things have seemingly slowed down over the last couple of weeks. Copious amounts of champagne after the last container cap worked Bonnie and all that casing.

Both operations are being prepared simultaneously. Monday the well lines are being reattached to the riser pipes that extend from the seafloor to near the surface, after they were temporarily abandoned this weekend due to the threat of tropical storm Bonnie. Both lines will be flushed to remove sediments.

Starting Wednesday and continuing through Sunday, the lines will each be fitted with a 2,000-foot internal casing pipe that will carry the materials downward. Once they are in place, the static kill operation will occur, likely Monday. The entire endeavor is set to prepare the launch of the relief well operation.

“The week after next we will have the potential … to begin killing the well.”

Did anyone hear Jon Stewart saying last night that Tony Hayward started at BP as a geologist at the age of 22 and with a PhD? Ah, that famous one-year University of Edinburgh PhD. Ok, it turns out he was 25. Either way, it’s the first I heard he started out in the industry as a production geologist before “rising quickly through the ranks in a series of technical and commercial roles in BP Exploration” and “coming to Lord ‘Culture of Complacency’ Browne‘s attention.” The shame.

In other news, a plan to kill American geologist with poison beer. The terrorists know our weakness.

Harvard Magazine | Gutenberg 2.0

… [Isaac Kohane, director of the Countway Library at Harvard Medical School] sees similar problems when making the rounds with medical students, fellows, and residents: “When we run into a problematic complex patient with a clearly genetic problem from birth, and I ask what the problem might be and what tests are to be ordered, their reflex is either to search their memories for what they learned in medical school or to look at a textbook that might be relevant. They don’t have what I would characterize as the ‘Google reflex,’ which is to go to the right databases to look things up.” The students doubtless use Google elsewhere in their lives, but in medicine, he explains, “the whole idea of just-in-time learning and using these websites is not reflexive. That is highly troublesome because the time when you could keep up even with a subspecialty like pediatric neurosurgery by reading a couple of journals is long, long gone.”

I wish universities had general science informatics graduate programs, and not just bioinformatics ones. Do they? Then again, does one even need formal certification in “science informatics” when what is required beyond the requisite science degree(s) is a natural DIY inclination to search for information? How To Mine Online Resources can be a learned skill and net savvy certainly isn’t some genetic-nerd quality, but whither the reflex?

A comprehensive report on Open Access by the United Kingdom’s Joint Information Systems Committee:

The increased impact of wider access to academic research papers could be worth approximately £170 million per year to the UK economy.

Although we believe that publicly funded research should be available to everyone, it is not a straightforward journey and our role is to involve and work with colleges and universities to help them to make the choices that are right for their individual situation … The long term goal is to achieve a coherent layer of open scholarly and academic resources readily available to all on the internet.

Anya Kamenetz and I met years ago in New Orleans when she interviewed me on post-K recovery for the Village Voice. She has now penned the insightful and timely DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. From the book:

1. The promise of free or marginal-cost open-source content, techno-hybridization, unbundling of educational functions, and learner-centered educational experiences and paths is too powerful to ignore. These changes are inevitable. They are happening now …

2. However, these changes will not automatically become pervasive. Many existing institutions, especially those with the greatest reserves of wealth and reputation, will manage to remain outwardly, physically the same for decades, and to charge ever-higher tuition, even as enrollment shifts more and more toward the for-profits and community colleges and other places that adopt these changes.

3. In order to short-circuit the cost spiral, and provide access to appropriate education and training for people of all backgrounds, there is much hard work to be done in the way schools are funded and accreditation and transfer policies are set. College leaders need to have the will to change … political leaders need to legislate change … Above all, learners and their families need to recognize that alternatives to the status quo exist and demand change.

4. The one thing that can change dramatically and relatively swiftly is the public perception of where the true value and quality of higher education lies. It’s no longer about the automatic four-year degree for all. Institutions can’t rely any more on history, reputation, exclusivity, and cost; we now have the ability to peer inside the classroom … So we have both the ability and the obligation to look at demonstrated results.

Change comes from imagination, moving away from the herd mentality and questioning how a traditional college education will serve one’s ambitions for the future. This is why I don’ t have a college degree in computer science; no way good money would be wasted on something I could teach myself. It was my interest in geology, which requires laboratory facilities and access to field education, that motivated and propelled me through what is otherwise a factory conveyor belt*. I’m really interested in science access being made open further through the creation of co-learning spaces (like co-working and co-tech spaces) and, in this day and age of the Maker Faire, public maker laboratories with teachers. Or is this where universities with these facilities can re-establish their relevance and open their doors to learners wanting shorter-term contracts?

That’s it for now.

* The stadium classes, the use of precious laboratory and discussion time to re-learn and re-teach what the professor crammed into the 50-minute lecture, tutoring your fellow students after class because your teaching assistant has mentally checked out, finally caving into student demands of “Is this going to be on the test?” only to find out that they can’t reproduce an answer if it stared them in the face and the terminal humiliation of the grading curve. And they wonder why we have a creativity crisis.

* Anatomy of an Oil Spill Part I: The Sea Shepherd‘s Bonny Schumaker recently flew New Orleans blogger Dambala out over the Gulf of Mexico’s shelf. He photodocuments the flight from New Orleans over  Raccoon Island, LA (Louisiana’s most important seabird nesting site west of Breton Sound) to the Deepwater Horizon site and then to Horn Island, MS and Ocean Springs Airport, MS and back.

One thing which became immediately apparent was the large amount of failed boom, not just at Racoon, but all over the barrier islands.

… After leaving Racoon, we took off toward the Horizon well site.  We immediately ran into signs of oil and dispersant, on a rather large scale.  We spotted a small pod of dolphins right about a mile from the Racoon area, but after that … nada.  I’ve flown over the Gulf before and been out in boats, and I was very spooked at the overall absence of dolphins.

As we progressed, the oil became more and more apparent in different forms and textures.  It was like Baskin Robbins 32 flavors of Hell …

* I don’t know how many of you caught this piece of news over the weekend but a Deepwater Horizon chief engineer revealed to federal investigators that fire and gas alarms aboard the rig had been disabled for at least a year “because the rig’s leaders didn’t want to wake up to false alarms.” Having spent several nights onboard another Transocean drilling vessel, this makes me feel all kinds of lucky and freaked out. Safety culture, you betcha.

* JoeJoeJoe pointed me to this NatGeo article with a photo gallery which explains how “UV light could help cleanup crews pinpoint hard-to-see oil that might then be treated with oil-eating bacteria.” A neat idea, but too many times have we started yet another environmental disaster to combat a previous one. I suggest that we dig trenches on beaches that have supposedly already been cleaned up and shine the UV light in there.

* Remember, BP’s expenses from the cleanup are tax-deductible.

LiveScience | What Will Happen to Gulf Oil if Bonnie Strikes?

What happens will depend in part on which way the wind blows. Hurricanes move in a counter-clockwise direction and so tend to move water from east to west — the opposite direction from the way the oil has generally been spreading so far. That means a tropical storm or hurricane passing to the west of the oil slick could drive oil to the coast, while one to the east could push oil away from the coast, according to NOAA.

This is an accretionary wedge.

The Accretionary Wedge has put out a call for posts on the purpose of geoblogging and the geoblogosphere.

… how bloggeology can “impact” society and “real geology”, should and can we promote the “geoblogosphere”, and are blogs private “business” or public affairs, and institutions underevaluating the possibilities given by this new method of communication?

Should it have a role in disseminating research?  Should geoblogging be factored into academic- or business- employees’ evaluations?  Can, and how should, the expertise and enthusiasm of  geobloggers be harnessed to effectively reach and educate the broader public?

1) Should and can we promote the geoblogosphere? Does it have an impact on society? To me, these two questions are highly intertwined. It is also the toughest question of them all so I am going to break it down into more manageable pieces and answer it first.

a) What is a geoblog? To answer that, let’s ask: What is a blog? Having been a blogger for more than a decade, I find that the term “blog” defies accurate description beyond logging in an electronic, online format one’s thoughts, opinions, creations and media finds. That’s it. A blog is not strictly a journal or online magazine dedicated to a single topic. Nor does it always serve the purpose of discussion, education or service beyond merely existing. There are blogs within blogs, thanks to categories and tags; a blog is easily transformed to cater to varying audiences through filters and switches. Lastly, a blog need not belong to a larger community of blogs for validation and content consumption. Given what a blog is not, I then submit that even a single post that discusses a geological topic and presents itself for online scrutiny constitutes a geoblog. It is after all a web log on geology.

b) What is the geoblogosphere? Blogging is an extremely democratic medium in that anyone can have a blog and write on any topic of their choosing sans an editor(ial board), a publisher and a significant budget. A blogger doesn’t need the validation of a group of peers as long as he or she has studied the topic, has credibility in the area and is open to discuss and debate any claims made in the blog at hand. The democracy of blogs is furthered in that consumers, for the most part, do not have to penetrate a group or buy into a subscription in order to gain information on any given subject. Therefore, in my mind, the ideal geoblogosphere is not about circling (sphering) the blog wagons and creating an echo chamber in which only the bloggers largely recognize and understand one another. In fact, it’s not about a sphere at all. A conscientious community of online geoscientists understands that geology must be accessible to all and in as many ways and forms as possible.

c) This is why I’m not a “geoblogger” despite the fact that I’m a structural geologist, geophysicist, geospatial technologist, science educator and very prolific blogger. As my About section or flipping through a few pages of posts will tell you, I am passionate about a lot more than geoscience, especially New Orleans, Indian-American issues and politics, and blog about these topics almost daily. This does not dilute the contents of my blog, however. Far from it, writing passionately about various topics has brought disparate people together here, to learn more about and discuss the ground beneath their feet and how it affects and is affected by the decisions we humans make at the surface and many that are out of our control. If I were to make this place a geoblog and call myself a geoblogger, I am othering and then removing geoscience from the floor of public discussion, and far be it from to me to intimidate my readers through the exclusion inherent in labeling.

This is not a question of being a lumper as opposed to a splitter, and there is an urgent info-sharing need within the science community for blogs on esoteric topics in geology and other sciences. In this day and age of increased educational and economic specialization and attempts to extinguish critical thinking in schools and society, however, my chosen responsibility is to protect against the building of ivory towers and to promote renaissance thinking. It airs out the minds of geoscientists and non-geoscientists alike and keeps us open to new ideas. When we have more well-rounded, scientific-minded people, not just scientists, the rest will follow.

d) The importance of community and credibility is not lost on me. I identify as a New Orleans (NOLA) Blogger. Again, anyone familiar with or interested in New Orleans and writes about it online is a NOLA Blogger. Period. Yet, at critical times like Hurricane Katrina, The Flood and the ongoing recovery as well as the latest BP Oil Spill nightmare, it helps not to be the lone informed scientist/activist ranting and raving into the electronic ether hoping someone will pay attention. Knowing other people who share your passion and ideas and the resulting link love, retweets and online discussion forums, i.e. an online community, eases the upstream battle, raises an issue’s visibility and increases the odds that something is going to be done about it.

e) Geoscience blogging has a very real impact on society and policy. That New Orleans was not flooded by Hurricane Katrina but instead by shoddily-built and poorly-maintained levees and incompetence at all levels of government is a fact kept alive by the New Orleans blogosphere five years later, not the news media. Online communities like The Oil Drum consist of and attract those educated in the intricacies of oilfield geology and engineering to dispel myths and promote facts to laypeople, in the absence of transparency on the part of those in charge of the recovery effort. Just look at the places the California Serpentinite issue has gone thanks to geologists networked via their blogs, Twitter and societies. The job is endless, but so is legislative and public ignorance.

f) Topical bloggers that come together to educate, advocate and organize is a plus, but a loose confederacy, which tightens in times of need, is more than sufficient. Again, geoscience awareness impacts policy, but only if those that make policy, down to the voters, have a healthy dose of geoscience in their everyday discussions, as it is those conversations and attendant concerns that later become laws. In order for this to happen, readers must feel welcomed and included at “geoblogs.” Unfortunately, any “sphere” always faces the threat of becoming insular, and this is made worse in circles of highly educated people competing about how much they know. Proximity to academia doesn’t help, either. For instance, during some discussions of the various BP well “kill” methods over at The Oil Drum and associated online chats, some well-versed in the oilfield often pulled the Oh My God I Can’t Believe You Don’t Know That or These Civvies Just Don’t Know What Goes Into Oil Production card on people asking innocent and valid questions in order to further their own understanding. Do I want to read the work of an authoritative and confident blogger? Yes. Do I want to fight against a lot of jargon and inside banter designed to deflect? No. So, I don’t know how promoting a “geoblogosphere” (as defined by whom?) helps.

The rest of the questions don’t require hefty paragraphs, so I’ll answer them quickfire.

2) How can bloggeology impact “real geology?” A blog is just another medium, but one that doesn’t suffer the physical access restrictions of books or journals. As I said earlier, there is a very real need for the open-access sharing of research, especially the publicly-funded kind, within and outside the geoscience community. Moreover, increased exposure to research outside one’s specialty does great things for creativity and scope.

3) Are blogs private “business” or public affairs? They can be both. My only caveat for corporate blogs, given their well-funded reach into society, is that they provide ample disclosures and open, moderated discussion sections. This gets into the generally horrendous (read: clueless) nature of corporate outreach online and blogging as advertising, but I feel that this can be combated with a genuinely conscientious marketing department. Or as a friend said, “It’s about understanding customers’ needs and giving relevant, useful, interesting, entertaining content.”

4) Are institutions underevaluating the possibilities given by this new method of communication? It’s not a new method of communication, but academic institutions sure treat it as such and with suspicion. More than the odd professor, I really wish geoscience schoolteachers and geology departments would begin blogging more. Never have two groups needed to do more outreach. The former party is usually not strictly an earth science teacher and therefore resource-hungry while the latter tries so very hard to attract students into its curriculum. It’s often the case that a geology department has a very good relationship with local schools but what about towns that don’t have universities? I think these two parties blogging, networking and reaching out, especially to one another, can net some excellent, mutually-beneficial relationships.

5) Should geoblogging be factored into academic- or business- employees’ evaluations? Again, a blog is just a medium, a tool for getting the message out. So, outreach is key here, not blogging for blogging’s sake, and that is what employees ought to be evaluated on if that is also the culture and practice of the company.

With that, I am going to open the floor to comments, questions and polite pushback. This is a living, breathing blog, so thoughts here evolve and/or deepen with time and discussion. Please check back for any updates.

What needs to happen right away?

The near term fix is to release the cap and control the flow of oil to surface ships. Secondly, complete the relief well drilling to try and cement both inside and outside the casing shut at the point of intervention.

How is the relief well expected to work?

… use the relief well to cement both inside and outside the well casing in hopes of stopping any flow. The probability of success is uncertain but it’s still the best option for now.

The relief well comes in at the bottom of the column instead of the top. As mud and cement are pushed into the pipe way down the well it will build a column of weight on the oil column climbing the well. That weight ultimately should subdue the reservoir and seal in the well.

The following is an interesting statement by Hofmeister with respect to prevention of further oil volcanoes

… the original damage to the blowout protector, pre-blowout, needs to be fully understood to determine whether blowout protectors need improvement overall with more redundancy built in.

given that the failed blowout preventer was modified in China instead of in the US.

Experts say that the practice of having such engineering work carried out in China, rather than the US, saves money and is common in the industry.

… There is no evidence that the significant modifications to the blowout preventer (BOP), which were carried out in China in 2005, caused the equipment to fail. But industry lawyers said BP could be made liable for any mistakes that a Chinese subcontractor made carrying out the work. It would be almost impossible to secure damages in China, where international law is barely recognised.

Saved a lot of money there! Read about Chinese engineering for offshore concerns gone wrong over at NOLA-Dishu. I have all kinds of questions and scenarios about immunity from liability floating in my head now.

More, including the debate over whether the oil flow should restart, at The Oil Drum.

What is the status of the relief well? ETA?

Oscar The Cat reacts to this morning's presser.

Hard-hitting journalism: “Did you feel the earthquake, Mr. President?” I am not for Geology PR at all costs, even if deep fault reactivation on the eastern continental margin is hella cool.

BP halts Gulf oil flow for first time since April. Now waiting on test and seal of the dud well and the relief well to capture all flow from the reservoir. Does anyone have a good graphic of the intended relief/capture mechanism?

Gulf’s Artificial Islands Already Failing I was under the impression that engineers had a) thought about the islands’ long-term stability – wrong, and b) figured, “We’re screwed if we do or do not. Why not give it a shot?” Coastal scientist Len Bahr, who is quoted extensively in this article, will be an environmental panelist at the Rising Tide conference in New Orleans this year.

NPR | Massey Mine Workers Disabled Safety Monitor

… an electrician deliberately disabled a methane gas monitor on a continuous mining machine because the monitor repeatedly shut down the machine. Three witnesses say the electrician was ordered by a mine supervisor to “bridge” the automatic shutoff mechanism in the monitor.

“What makes it criminal is that somebody actively takes steps to defeat the safety protection. And that should be prosecuted. You’ve put production over the safety of your employees.”

Digital Journal | Shortcuts may have led to well blow-out, BP faces record fines

An independent engineer with expertise in well failure analysis has called BP’s actions before the blowout as “horribly negligent.” Gordon Aaker, Jr, P.E., is a Failure Analysis Consultant with the firm Engineering Services, LLP, and told Committee staff it was “unheard of” not to perform a cement bond log with the single casing method.

Now, was this just a series of bad decisions by a few employees on a given project? How did these employees gain the leeway to authorize said unsafe activity without blessings from farther up the chain? Or do higher-ups not care how the job is done until a mine or rig explodes into a PR nightmare? Either approach is frightening. I hope these are questions being discussed during the (ersatz) moratorium.