CNN Live Blowout Video
Posted: May 20th, 2010 by: h2
Well, it looks from CNN live blowout video that the inserted tube seems to be helping a little bit.
Latest reports are that the insertion tube is getting about 5000 barrels a day. Given that the main leak was about 85% of the total flow, and that it looks like roughly 2/3’s of the previous video flow is being captured, that would put the pre insertion flow rate at about 10k barrels per day, give or take.
Today’s TheOilDrum.com Deepwater Horizon blowout thread.
This fits more or less with what people in the business were saying, although of course it’s very difficult to make estimates based on so little information.
At least it’s not the top possible 50k barrels per day, that an uninterupted blowout would have caused. Remember, the drilling and riser pipes crimped, and the BOP itself also had crimped the pipe partially, so there was never a question of a 100% flow.
The good news of course is that, given that USA now gets about 30% of its production from the Gulf of Mexico, and that it has to import about 50%+ of its daily oil supplies, this may, finally, help slow and then start reducing our daily oil consumption, for the simple reason there just isn’t any extra oil out there.
I realize this will make car addled Americans absolutely desperate, panicked, in fact, but it’s better to start dealing with the future now, when it’s still somewhat possible, than when it hits us harder.
Remember, the Chinese are locking down long term oil contracts left and right, making friends, alliances, left and right. The US, on the other hand, is pissing off the Middle East, maintaining its long term non-viable support of Israel (at least in its current form), invading and occupying OPEC countries, and in general just not being a good neighbor. Not hard to look ahead to see who is going to win that race, and ideology has nothing to do with it, China is paying cash, we are borrowing to buy the oil, to maintain our military, etc….
Simple math: subtract 1 trillion plus dollars from the USA expenses this year to see where we’d be without borrowing:
300 Billion give or take for oil imports
between 150 and 200 billion for our Afghanistan/Iraq occupations.
That’s half the trillion right there. So that starts giving you an idea of what we can actually afford at current priorities of financial resource allocation.