Drill baby drill

Cheers dude -

Yeah it's very difficult.

Working in the offshore, deepwater exploration and production business is incredible, exciting and challenging.  It is like landing on the moon every day! The investment in technology is incredible, and the advances made yearly in this game are truly mind blowing.

Due to the power of oil as a commoditity, you simply cannot just take it off the agenda over night. Fuel is where to start, and as i mentioned - natural gas is the most viable alternative.  Solar and wind can help for power, but they're incredibly expensive and the economies of scale just do not work - we all live in such a power / energy hungry world, it truly is mind blowing.

I was discussing this the other day with a very senior colleauge.  Oil prices are going to go through the roof, where as Gas will remain very cheap comparetively.

I heard an interesting stat today from the US environmental agency that stated that although this spill sounds catastrophic, it is not just yet, and that it is yet to reach natural seepage rates in the GoM .  That said, that is spread over the whole region, but it should be highlighted that there is an abundance of bilogical organisms that exist by consuming oil within our oceans breaking this down naturally. (im in no way defending anything here, to me this spill is shocking and simply should not happen in 2010).

The reason i began working in oil was that - it's gives you the opportunity to travel the world, I always thought why pay to travel the world, if you can get someone to pay you to do it.  I also wanted an exciting, adventurous job, and yes even dangerous....  and of course it pays well, being an engineer in the oil industry is very well paid.

I love the oceans, i grew up in them - and i always wanted to work in them... and of course protect them - and i can tell you that the sequence of events that led up to this will be investigated and there is a reason it happened (1000's of wells a year similar to this are safely completed and produced), for which there will be blame and severe repurcussions. I am interested to hear everyones thoughts on offshore oil production though? Think about how your life would change if there was no oil? No PS3, Xbox....   ski's.... (back to wood anyway!) - plastics, they're gone....  forget fuel, think of oil as the building blocks for everything man made - our reliance on oil is almost total.   

Oh and by the way, P-Face is totally on point with what he's saying, and i understand totally his frustration. I'm just trying to put his mind at rest that these companies are investing billions (because they can, nobody else has the resources, not even governments, to invest these amounts in alternative fuels etc.... because ultimately as i said, they are the future of these companies businesses).

What im trying to say is, i'm a subsea engineer, my job is to design subsea structures, manifolds, pipelines, etc etc...  it just so happens I work in Oil subsea and making sure we can produce this oil and transport it back land safely.  The integrity of that system is totally my priority.

But - I would like to point out, that I have also worked on Tidal Power systems, huge subsea structures that harness tidal power and generate power from it..... but it's VERY difficult and the numbers just dont add up for the actual power it provides... they are reliant on such dynmanic conditions... but the technologies are advancing all  the time due to Oil Company investment.

Nat Gas right now is the future, and it's clean...   but you still need offshore facilities to produce it (as well as onshore, many gas develops currently in CO and PA etc...) and onshore infrastructure to communicate it around the country (pipelines etc)... almost like a natural grid...  then you could run cars largely off gas in the near future...  it burns much more efficiently and hot (power porduction).  Wet gas too is a huge emerging future technology and market (LPG, LNG etc)...  this is so much cleaner then oil, and a helllluva lot cheaper.  A barrel of oil will hit 200 dollars in the next 5 years or so, where as gas will probably remain around 20-30 equiv. 

Yeah so i hear.

A friend of mine is heading up the work to shut off the well, and believe me, it's the biggest challenge he's ever had.  So much damage was done during the blowout, and also because the top tensioners on the riser never let go until the rig sank, it effectively became an anchor.  The rig was some 800ft off location, tugging on the riser / well head because obviously it's dynamic positioning had failed.

I saw some ROV footage from the seabed on Sat - probably shouldn't discuss it, but's it's not the best, and they're being completley honest with the media etc... so nothing i tell you is new....   it's pissing oil out from the riser, where it broke, and i think from the well head.

The riser actually goes up, across, then down... the force driving it back into the seabed and back up some distance from the well head.

They're working round the clock, my friend is destroyed...   they have around 1000 people, 4 planes and a shit load of vessels  and another rig...  costs of around $6 mil a day, but in reality, once all this settles, it'll work out probably more then double that.

They're still working on the BOP...  the Stab Plate for ROV overide is probably face down in the mud, and the stack is bent through 90 deg. so they're desperately trying to override the valves.

If a burn off keeps oil off the coast, then they will do it. This oil needs to stay out in Deepwater, that way it will naturally disperse and break down.

It's still a shit show, but all i can say is they have the best of the best working on it, and i know they will find a solution.

in a mile of water (depth!), the surface burning isn't ideal, but it's a much much better solution then letting this get anywhere near the shore, plus it'll be in a controlled manner as possible.  Cleaning oil up offshore and in deep water is easy compared to cleaning it up in swamps, marshlands and the coasts of La. Even a sandy beach is better then that... 

It's aslo super light crude, so will burn like a mutha...   it's not that heavy clumpy crap like in Valdez... alot of the super light fractions will of even evaporate off now also...  

and yeah - they're still working on over-riding the BOP valves - and i'm sure there is a complex series of events / failures that led to this occurring, for which people will do Jail time.  How many bankers do you see in jail for fucking up the rest of the world - just an interesting thought.

There is no right / wrong answer to the offshore drilling, oil dependancy argument....  right now, oil is in such demand it has to carry on in production...   fuel is a small proportion of Oil's final market destination....  alternative fuels are very easily a real possibility, but what about everything else... ? and i mean everything, take a look around you... 90% of what you look at has some kind of crude oil heritage, i gaurantee you..   it's crazy...  I do not have the answers and i'm sure none of NS do either, otherwise they'd be very wealthy and living on a private island somewhere...  hate it or love it, oil is a fact of life - but nobody invests in new technologys and alternatives then the oil companies... they invest billions on it... who else can afford to do that, certainly not governments, they're too busy looking after the banks fuck ups, yet the bankers who caused everything enjoy their millions made in the last 5-10 years? So hate them or love them, Oil companies are both the bad guys and the good guys... but they're a lot more balanced then people assume.  Bp announced huge profits today, which believe me is a great thing... they have a huge pot of cash to reinvest in the future energy technologies and needs of the planet, including oil and gas, and reknewables.  

It's a head bending situation, that's for sure - and believe me, im not defending anyone in reference to the Horizon...   but repurcussions will be severe and this really is the worst possible timing for this to have happened!!