There is new evidence that the BP Deepwater well has been damaged and is leaking oil or natural gas into the surrounding seabed, a worst-case scenario that the company has portrayed as extremely unlikely since the runaway well was closed on Thursday afternoon to test for damage.
In a terse letter sent Sunday night by National Incident Commander Thad Allen to BP director Bob Dudley, Admiral Allen cited a “detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head…” Both are possible indications of damage to the well that exploded in April, killing eleven people outright and releasing millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for over three months.
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has arrived in Houston to be on hand as the well integrity test begins. Chu, according to a DOE press release issued this morning, is “overseeing” the test. His team of government scientific experts include:
Tom Hunter, director of DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories
George Cooper, expert in materials science, retired professor from UC-Berkeley
Richard Lawrence Garwin, physicist and IBM Fellow Emeritus
Alexander Slocum, professor of mechanical engineering, MIT
I’ve posted an image from the live BP feed showing the well continuing to spew oil this Tuesday morning, in case the live feed below shifts or goes down. It’s posted at on my blog Solar Plexus, part of the True/Slant news site.
A communication breakdown this evening left many people believing that the BP well that has been gushing oil out of control for 83 days had been plugged early this evening.
It hadn’t.
The image above, taken from a streaming video from one of many remotely operated vehicles (ROV) at the site this evening shows oil continuing to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. (See live video feed, below)
The confusion appears to have begun with a remark made earlier today by National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen.
“Significant progress has been made on the capping stack installation,” said Allen, referring to the new cap with a tighter seal that, officials hope, will allow BP to contain most if not all of the oil coming from the well.
Later, there were unofficial reports that the cap had been “successfully installed.” The word “success” coupled with the fact that for a period of time only one of the many ROV cameras showed the oil spewing, and indistinctly at first, led to the belief that the flow of oil had at last been stopped.
“BP’s new cap in place. It appears all the oil in being contained,” read one overly-optimistic, but typical, tweet this evening.
A civilian employee of the Coast Guard, reached by phone at the government’s Joint Information Center, told The Phoenix Sun that the Skandi 2 ROV camera “appears to show oil is leaking.” (She did not want to be identified because she is not an official spokesperson for the JIC.)
Later, BP issued a press release stating that the new “capping stack” had been installed at 7 PM CDT.
The statement from BP indicates that until testing is completed nothing conclusive can be said about whether or not the stack will actually work. The tests, however, are not designed to examine the stack itself. BP is attempting to determine the condition of the well casement below the sea floor. Serious damage there could make full containment above the wellhead impossible, reinforcing the importance of the twin relief wells that are still being drilled.
The communication problems that have plagued the operation since the Deep Water Horizon exploded in April, continue to add to the general confusion and mistrust of the oil giant. While there was nothing wrong with Allen’s statement earlier today, in its most recent press release, BP once again muddies the waters (so to speak).
The test, BP states early in the release, “will be be a minimum of 6 hours and could extend up to 48 hours…”
If you interpreted that statement to mean that the test will take between 6 and 48 hours, you have not been paying enough attention to BP’s use of the English language.
Ninety-seven words later, the press release states that depending on circumstances, BP may decide to extend “the test duration beyond 48 hours.” Forty-eight hours, you see, is the lower end of the upper end of the test duration, which has no upper-upper end.
Solar-powered plane sets record by flying all night
“When you took off it was another era. You land in a new era where people understand that with renewable energy you can do impossible things.”
Solar Impulse co-founder Bertrand Piccard to pilot André Borschberg
At 9 AM this morning Swiss time, the Solar Impulse airplane entered the record books by landing — after 26 hours aloft powered only by the sun.
The flight was the culmination of a seven-year long effort by a team of 150 engineers, scientists and other experts, led by project co-founder Bertrand Piccard, the Swiss aviator who made the first non-stop, round-the-world journey in a hot air balloon in 1999.
Solar Impulse pilot Andre Borschberg
The Solar Impulse has the wingspan of a jumbo jet (63.4 meters, 208 feet) but weighs about the same as a Honda Accord (1,600 kg, 3527 lbs). The $88 million project has been funded by mostly-Swiss partners and public donations.
After completing the flight over the Jura mountains and Lake Neuchâtel, Swiss pilot André Borschberg described his “extraordinary night” to reporters.
“Just sitting there and watching the battery charge level rise and rise thanks to the sun,” he said, “and then that suspense, not knowing whether we were going to manage to stay up in the air the whole night. And finally the joy of seeing the sun rise and feeling the energy beginning to circulate in the solar panels again. I have just flown more than 26 hours without using a drop of fuel and without causing any pollution.”
Revolutions in solar and battery technology
Piccard credited recent improvements in solar power technology for the successful flight.
Solar cell "skin"
“Compared with 2003, energy efficiency has increased from 16 to 22 percent,” said Piccard. “And the cells are now half as thick.”
The ultra-thin solar cells — only 150 microns thick — were developed by leading solar manufacturer SunPower and scientists at Neuchâtel University. The long wings of the Solar Impulse are covered with a skin of 11,000 silicon solar cells.
Swiss chemical giant Solvay worked with South Korean-based Kokam to produce a new lithium polymer battery with an energy density nearly double the previous form. The lighter batteries combined with the lighter solar cells and newly designed ultra-light motors to allow Solar Impulse to generate sufficient electricity during the day to fly and still have enough stored energy to stay aloft during the night.
The solar-powered plane flew at an average speed of 25 mph and climbed to an altitude of 28,000 feet.
Piccard and his team are set to begin work on a new plane. This version will need several improvements to achieve the team’s next goal: flying around the world in five days — broken up into five stages.
The most recent post in the team’s blog celebrates this morning’s event and concludes with these instructions for readers: “You all go off and pick a sunflower, plant it in your yard, and keep the spirit alive. Till the next, fabulous step toward a greener, more sustainable world. Cheers.”
