Matt Simmons continues to say BOP / Casing is blown out of the ground
Posted: June 15th, 2010 by: h2
I don’t know, there’s something surreal going on here. Matt Simmons has been insisting that the casing is blown out of the ground, which would mean the BOP unit was blown off its moorings, but it isn’t.
Oil, in case you haven’t noticed, is pouring out of the BOP at what has just been revised upwards to 30,000 to 60,000 barrels per day.
So what’s going on here with Matt Simmons?
Watch today’s video, Simmons Says Nuclear Device Only Option to Stop Oil Leak: Video (embedding not permitted).
Here’s a few older ones, from right before the top kill was attempted, and failed:
Dylan Ratigan Gulf Oil Spill Matt Simmons “another leak much bigger 5 to 6 miles away”
This is just strange, and very hard to understand what he’s saying. He’s saying that the leak we see is not the main leak, but that there is a second outlet. I don’t know, there is no evidence that I can see for these statements. Something is very strange. But this makes no sense at all, the BOP is standing ontop of the main pipe, into which the casing is inserted, so logically this scenario Simmons is discussing just makes no sense at all.
Also odd he his refering to NOAA scientists to backup his statements, yet nothing like what he is saying in NOAA releases.
Mitch Rapp, odd isn’t the word. I’ve really liked Matt Simmons since I read his ‘Twilight in the Desert’, which was a very well researched and presented book.
But I am afraid that he is in the process of seriously undermining his carefully built up credibility as the most prominent peak oil spokes person available, especially as a Republican who can access the right wing political sector in the USA.
I don’t understand what’s going on with his brain to be honest, the comments he is making simply do not correspond to material reality. The first time he mentioned this, he said the BOP was blown off the casing and that the riser casing was filled with oil that was then coming out of the bop unit. This was a patently false statement, and one that was trivially verifiable as false. The BOP is on the casing, which has not blown out of the hole.
Now there are fragments of his words that are proving to be true, like the flow rate of the well being far higher than predicted.
But there is no thick black lake of crude, there is a very loosely dispersed plume of oil droplets. Also, his discussion of the nuclear option ignores all the problems with that method, especially in the loose geology of the Gulf, and especially operating under 5000 feet of water.
I think someone needs to find out what’s wrong with Matt, he’s been a great spokesman and has tirelessly brought home the message that peak oil is here, the OPEC countries are lying about their reservoir sizes, etc, but he is now destroying all the credit he built up. Everyone out there who understands this stuff is either maintaining an awkward uncomfortable silence, like when your crazy aunt walks into the room, or is trying to figure out what on earth he’s talking about.
By the way, Simmons and Company themselves are clearly forcing an explicit separation between themselves and the emeritus status Chairman Simmons, as it’s just been announced that Matt Simmons is retiring officially June 30. Obviously, under pressure, though that won’t be stated.
If the drifting DWH pulled the casing string out with a blown wellhead,
it could be that the casing is still feeding the BOP, while the
well site gushes profusely. Not possible ?
No, that is patently absurd. I have no idea what has gone wrong with Matt Simmons, he is a man I have admired, I have read his Twilight in the Desert, which was exceptionally well researched, and very thought provoking, and there is simply no comparison between these two versions of him.
Matt is just making this stuff up out of thin air.
the bop unit is attached to a heavily cemented set of drill casings, and the oil is spurting out of the top of it. This is a fact, there is not an alternate universe about 50 miles off the shore in the Gulf, at least not one that anyone other than Matt seems to have been able to discover.
Every single thing Matt said in his recent interviews was false, except one thing, the amount of the oil spill is larger than the initial 5k barrel per day, the government sponsored original estimate. BP, it should be noted, never released an official spill amount, for liability reasons.
There is no plume of solid black oil, the bop is attached to the drill casing strings. There is no crack that lets the oil out 6 to 7 miles away.
Not one iota of evidence for this exists except for his ill considered remarks. Simmons and company has publically and officially repudiated Simmons and has explicitly stated that his views do not correspond to theirs.
The statement that the research vessel had discovered vast black plumes of heavy oil is categorically false. They found faint cloud like formations of tiny oil droplets that did not retain concrete form, and in fact which often could not even be discovered again when they passed over the same area again.
Even his comments about bringing in super tankers to suck up the oil/water mixture is not based on any reality that anyone except one person who says he did this for the Saudis in 93 during the biggest oil spill in history, unreported. The oildrum recently analyzed the claims of that oil spill, and found them wanting, and the Saudis categorically deny such a spill ever occured (though they are not reliable when it comes to honesty, in general, such a spill would be detected by satellites and no such reports have ever surfaced).
In fact, as the weeks have passed, every single thing Simmons said has been shown to be not just false, but totally false.
The only point he was sort of right about was the overall oil quantities. As it’s turning out, it could be up to 60k barrels per day, although when he made the claim, pre riser cut and cappiing of bop unit, it may have been 40k barrels per day.
The comments about the casing feeding the bop, as if the casing could shoot out, and then a 450 ton bop unit could drive this casing back down into the mud at almost perfect vertical, is so absurd that it’s not even worth discussing, unless you want to also talk about UFOs and Aliens landing at the bottom of the Gulf and trying to feed off our oil lines, which of course is the true cause of this leak. Oh, man… I shouldn’t have said that, now they are going to get me!!
But seriously, look at the videos, you can see this for yourself, every phase has been on video, live, streaming, every day.
Even his claims on the pressure of the formation, about 40k PSi, are patently absurd, and off by a factor of about 3, the real pressures, logged by BP in the drilling, is about 13k PSI, 12,900 to be precise.
So on every level, Simmons is basically undermining all the good will he has helped create for the concept of peak oil over almost a decade, and he’s doing it in a self-destructive manner that should be causing his true friends true concern.
I am also trying to understand why Simmons has made these assertions without producing any evidence. I came across an article about him in Barrons, an investment magazine. Simmons has 8,000 shares of short-sales against BP. Lehmen Brothers was taken down by the same kind of whisper campaign.
http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2010/06/15/bp-simmons-still-sees-bankruptcy-massive-hole-at-the-well-bore/
Simmons is an investment banker and is pushing his offshore wind farm investment, big time. Kind of makes you wonder if Peak Oil is contrived, like so many other “scientific” falsehoods we fell for.
Nikki, unfortunately there’s far far far too much evidence for peak oil, along with general common sense, eg: when 6 plus billion people increase consumption of a finite raw material that was formed in finite regions of the planet earth’s geology millions of years ago, with no more to come, then common sense should be capable of noting that infinite consumption of a finite resource is not possible. Also, one could note that we are drilling in incredibly complex environments in order to try to simply maintain current oil productions levels.
Sadly, we also got very good at locating/extracting the oil that does exist, which means that, over the coming years, the decline curves will in fact steepen dramatically, since we’re doing such a great job pulling what is there out of the ground in increasingly rapid fashion.
So, no, sadly, although I understand why you, and many others hopelessly tied into the notion we can just consume without any consequences, want to believe peak oil, global warming, and so on, are not real events, Matt Simmon’s unfortunate break from reality I think has very little to do with his 8000 shares.
I think to small time people, who don’t deal in investment matters for a living, such numbers suggest a lot of money, but this is a drop in the bucket of his overall wealth, and isn’t much different than you buying some lottery tickets based on a hunch.
Personally, and this is only my opinion, based on watching him speak recently, and also watching the somewhat repetitive nature of his recent oil statements, I think he’s simply suffering from some mental disorder, possibly alcohol/pharmaceutical drug related, or a slow motion breakdown. And equally unfortunately, the press is giving him a free pass based on his previous excellent work, without even bothering to check his statements for physical possibility.
By the way, if you haven’t read his excellent Twilight in the Desert, I suggest you run out to your local library, if you have one, and check out a copy, if they have it. It’s an excellent read, and was most certainly not produced by the same type of thinking, eg, sloppy, that is producing his current near gibberish statements. Warning, it’s decently technical, and has a lot of facts, so if you’re looking for something to bolster the conspiracy type ideas you seem to be leaning towards, this book probably isn’t for you.
Keep in mind Simmons Inc. has distanced themselves from Matt Simmons in public statements, due to the damage such absurdities he is currently throwing out there could cause their reputation.
Peak oil is just basic geology, and common sense, it’s not particularly complex science. What’s actually worth looking into is the ability of our species to engage in such massive degrees of self-delusion in the face of the increasingly obvious need to change our behavior, or fail as a globally relevant species.