Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Louisiana Oil Rig Fire / Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Cimarron29414 · 05-26-2010, 12:03 PM

Good linking, rb. Thanks for the info.

There's a lot of emotion wrapped up in this thread, so I'm reluctant to ask for an objective reaction to something I heard.

I heard an argument on NPR that the primary challenge in solving this leak is the depth. The reason we are at this depth was the political pressure to keeping such rigs/risks offshore as far as possible. That does make sense, as long as one can plug a leak offshore - which clearly they can't. The alternative would be drilling close to shore in shallow depths where measures such as the funnel idea which failed 3 weeks ago has been proven to work. The risk there is that the oil from a leak would arrive on shore much faster, giving people inadequate time to create a preventative barrier. Of course, the counter to that is they had 30 days to put up barriers here and couldn't stop it from coming ashore, so what difference does it make?

In short, if we decide we HAVE to pursue oil from the sea, doesn't it seem much less risky to do it at shallow depths rather than deep? I recognize that this forces one to assume we "have" to pursue oil from the sea, just work with me here. What other factors, that I may be missing, make the close-to-shore drilling so undesirable?

BTW, I know this is all moot - this is the 3-mile-island of ocean oil exploration. There will be no more drilling for 30 years.

05-26-2010, 12:03 PM	#202 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	Good linking, rb. Thanks for the info. There's a lot of emotion wrapped up in this thread, so I'm reluctant to ask for an objective reaction to something I heard. I heard an argument on NPR that the primary challenge in solving this leak is the depth. The reason we are at this depth was the political pressure to keeping such rigs/risks offshore as far as possible. That does make sense, as long as one can plug a leak offshore - which clearly they can't. The alternative would be drilling close to shore in shallow depths where measures such as the funnel idea which failed 3 weeks ago has been proven to work. The risk there is that the oil from a leak would arrive on shore much faster, giving people inadequate time to create a preventative barrier. Of course, the counter to that is they had 30 days to put up barriers here and couldn't stop it from coming ashore, so what difference does it make? In short, if we decide we HAVE to pursue oil from the sea, doesn't it seem much less risky to do it at shallow depths rather than deep? I recognize that this forces one to assume we "have" to pursue oil from the sea, just work with me here. What other factors, that I may be missing, make the close-to-shore drilling so undesirable? BTW, I know this is all moot - this is the 3-mile-island of ocean oil exploration. There will be no more drilling for 30 years. __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly." Last edited by Cimarron29414; 05-26-2010 at 01:02 PM..