BP Berhasil Sumbat Bocornya Minyak

By Renne R.A Kawilarang - Jumat, 16 Juli

Proses penyumbatan bocornya sumur minyak bawah laut yang dikelola BP

VIVAnews - BP, untuk sementara waktu, mampu menyumbat bocornya sumur minyak bawah laut di Teluk Meksiko, di perairan selatan Amerika Serikat (AS). Perusahaan minyak terkemuka yang berbasis di Inggris itu, dengan bantuan Satuan Penjaga Pantai AS, selama 85 hari terakhir berupaya menutup kebocoran sumur minyak akibat ledakan suatu kilang.

Selama itu pula 184 juta galon minyak mentah berceceran di laut sehingga menyebabkan pencemaran lingkungan yang parah.

Berhasilnya penyumbatan sumur minyak itu terjadi setelah BP mengganti alat penyumbat dengan menggunakan teknologi robot. Kini, tim dari BP berharap bahwa alat penyumbat baru itu bisa bertahan lama sehingga tidak lagi terjadi kebocoran, sementara mereka memikirkan cara penyumbatan permanen.

Menurut BP, minyak mentah berhenti menyembur ke luar pada hari Kamis pukul 15.25 waktu Pantai Timur Amerika (Jumat dini hari WIB). "Itu merupakan pemandangan yang luar biasa," kata Doug Suttles, Kepala Eksekutif Operasional (COO) BP.

Namun, Suttles tidak menampik risiko bahwa minyak dari dalam bumi itu bisa saja menyembur lagi. "Ini masih jauh dari akhir. Maka, belum waktunya untuk membuat perayaan," kata Suttles.

Presiden AS, Barack Obama, menyebut perkembangan itu sebagai "tanda yang positif." Namun, dia tetap mewanti-wanti bahwa operasi ini masih dalam "tahap percobaan".

Kini, yang dikhawatirkan adalah bila tekanan dari sumur yang tersumbat itu dapat menyembut ke bagian lain di dasar laut. Tim BP juga berharap tidak ada ledakan dari dasar laut akibat tersumbatnya sumur minyak.

Lebih dari dua bulan terakhir, baik BP maupun satuan Penjaga Pantai (Coast Guard) belum mampu mengatasi bocornya sumur minyak di Teluk Meksiko, yang mengeluarkan sekitar 2,52 juta galon per hari. Kebocoran itu berawal dari ledakan kilang minyak milik BP pada 20 April lalu, yang menewaskan sebelas pekerja.

Jutaan barel minyak mentah dari sumur yang bocor di bawah laut itu terus menyebar ke seluruh perairan selatan AS. Banyak penghuni laut yang mati dan ini juga mematikan mata pencaharian para nelayan Amerika dan warga setempat.

Menurut perhitungan pengamat, hingga kini 184 juta galon minyak mentah berceceran di Teluk Meksiko. Selain terus menuntut pertanggungjawaban BP, Obama dan pemerintahannya juga berupaya agar pencemaran lingkungan itu tidak meluas ke wilayah lain.

Berkat tekanan dari Obama, pimpinan BP bulan lalu meminta maaf atas pencemaran lingkungan akibat bocornya sumur minyak yang dikelolanya di perairan selatan Amerika Serikat (AS). BP pun memberi ganti rugi sebesar US$20 miliar (sekitar Rp183,17 triliun) kepada pihak-pihak yang dirugikan akibat pencemaran itu. (Associated Press)

http://id.news.yahoo.com/viva/20100716/twl-bp-berhasil-sumbat-bocornya-minyak-cfafc46.html

Will human life be wiped out by a BP-induced methane eruption?

Will human life be wiped out by a BP-induced methane eruption? No.

By Brett Michael Dykes

Let's just get this out of the way now: The BP oil disaster, while horrible in innumerable ways, is not literally the end of the world.

If you've spent any considerable length of time on the Internet lately — and not just its dark conspiratorial alleys — you may have run across a number of geological reports that read like the plot of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie: BP may have haphazardly tapped into a violent reservoir of methane gas deep belowEarth's surface, possibly setting off a chain of events that could lead to release of a "methane mega-bubble"capable of triggering floods of biblical proportions and emitting poisons into the atmosphere, effectively wiping humans off the face of the Earth.

You're now probably wondering if it's time to start frantically compiling a bucket list of things to do before we're all killed off by a methane eruption. However, according to an expert interviewed by Yahoo! News, such doomsday predictions are "extreme" and highly unlikely to take place.

“I wouldn’t believe that at all," Gregory Stone, director of the Louisiana State University Coastal Studies Institute, told us. "There’s a lot of press out there in regards to this event that is just inaccurate. We’ve got some of the best scientists in the world here, and we’re not concerned about that scenario at all."

Another prominent scientist we contacted thought that the reports were such hogwash that he declined to even offer a comment to refute them.

So what's the root of all these apocalyptic scenarios that some news sources have given credence to? Well, most of them seem to trace back to a single scientist, Gregory Ryskin, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Northwestern University. Ryskin published a paper in 2003 titled "Methane-driven oceanic eruptions and mass extinctions" in which he theorized that "mass extinction can be caused by an extremely fast, explosive release of dissolved methane," an eruption that would release "deep anoxic waters that cause extinctions in the marine realm," with extinctions on land brought about by "explosions and conflagrations that follow the massive release of methane" and by "eruption-triggered floods."

In other words, we could all die from a massive earth fart.

[Photos: Tar balls hit Texas beaches]

There has been an influx of methane into the Gulf since the explosion of the oil rig, but no data suggest that it is the precursor to such a cataclysm. Certainly, the release of methane gas into the Gulf is cause for concern. As we reported a few weeks ago, credible scientific evidence suggests that huge dead zones could result from the large quantities of methane gas seeping from BP's busted well.

But, in the words of LSU's Dr. Stone, "there are far more important things to be concerned about in regards to the BP spill."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100714/sc_yblog_upshot/will-human-life-be-wiped-out-by-a-bp-induced-methane-eruption-no

BP deploys deepsea sensors to better measure spill

AP – Oil collects on the water's surface near the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico …

• Slideshow:Gulf Coast Oil Spill
• Play VideoVideo:Obama wants BP to set up funds for claimsAP

By RAY HENRY and BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writers – Sun Jun 13, 6:25 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – BP mounted a more aggressive response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday as it deployed undersea sensors to better measure the ferocious flow of crude while drawing up new plans to meet a government demand that it speed up the containment effort ahead of President Barack Obama's visit to the coast.

The financial ramifications of the disaster are growing by the day as the White House and states put pressure on BP to set aside billions of dollars to pay spill-related claims in a move that could quickly drain the company's cash reserves and hasten its path toward possible bankruptcy.

BP was also trying to meet a Sunday deadline to respond to a letter from the Coast Guard demanding that it intensify the efforts to stop the spill. One of the actions BP took Sunday was to use roboticsubmarines to position sensors inside the well to gauge how much oil is spilling.

The robots were expected to insert the pressure sensors through a line used to inject methanol — an antifreeze meant to prevent the buildup of icelike slush — into a containment cap seated over the ruptured pipe, BP spokesman David Nicholas said.

BP was installing the sensors at the request of a federal team of scientists tasked with estimating the flow, Nicholas said. He did not know when the request was made.

Scientists haven't been able to pin down just how much oil is leaking into the Gulf, although the high-end estimates indicated the spill could exceed 100 million gallons. The government has stressed that the larger estimates were still preliminary and considered a worse-case scenario.

The Obama administration's point man on the oil spill, Adm. Thad Allen, on Sunday said government officials think the best figures are from a middle-of-the-road estimate, which would put the spill at around 66 million gallons of oil. That is about six times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill.

BP is currently capturing about 630,000 gallons of oil a day, but hundreds thousands more are still escaping into the Gulf. The company has said that it could begin siphoning an additional 400,000 gallons a day starting Tuesday by burning it using a specialized boom being installed on a rig — and any new success would be welcome news for Obama as he returns to the Gulf.

The president was scheduled to arrive in the Gulf on Monday for a two-day visit that will be followed by a nationally televised address to the American people on Tuesday and a sit-down with BP executivesWednesday. The crisis has already become a crucial test for the Obama presidency as it takes a greater toll on his image with each day that more oil gushes into the sea.

"We're at a kind of inflection point in this saga, because we now know that, what essentially what we can do and what we can't do, in terms of collecting oil, and what lies ahead in the next few months," senior adviser David Axelrod said on NBC's "Meet the Press. "And he wants to lay out the steps that we're going to take from here to get through this, through this crisis."

Obama wants an independent, third party to administer an escrow account paid for by BP to compensate those with "legitimate" claims for damages. The amount of money set aside will be discussed during talks this week between the White House and BP, but the request will most definitely be in the billions.

Louisiana's treasurer has told The Associated Press that it wants $5 billion. Florida said it wants $2.5 billion.

"We are aware of the request," said BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams in London. She declined to comment further.

BP could have to tap its cash reserve to pay the fund while also borrow money to comply. That, however, presents a potential problem because the company's borrowing costs are likely to be a lot higher due to investor concerns.

Oil again began washing up in heavy amounts along the shores of Orange Beach, Ala. on Sunday afternoon as the winds shifted, turning the surf into an oily red mixture that left brown stains at the surf line.

A plane flew along the coast pulling a sign that read: "Obama, 55 days. What's it gonna take?"

Earlier in the day, crews wearing rubber globes and boots used shovels to scoop up the oil, sand and tar ball mixture and put it into trash bags.

The disposal of oil-soaked dirt and sand is part of a broad effort playing out across the Gulf Coast to clean up the mess.

Waste Management received a contract from BP to transport waste produced by cleanup crews assigned to work the stretch of the coastline. Ken Haldin, a Waste Management spokesman, said Sunday that the company has designated 65 trucks and 535 containers that are being filled with solid oil waste.

Waste Management has designated three landfills in three different states that are operated by the company to handle the oily refuse. Haldin noted that before the refuse is dumped, it has to be analyzed by both the waste removal company and by local government environmental authorities to make sure it is nonhazardous.

Waste Management also is handling some of the liquid waste skimmed from the ocean by cleanup crews, and has set up special equipment, including vacuum trucks, along the docks that separates oil from thewater. Once separated, the oil will be resold to oil services companies.

"This is a major mobilization effort," noted Haldin.

___

Skoloff reported from Orange Beach, Ala. Associated Press Writers Anne D'Innocenzio in New York, Harry R. Weber in Houston and Jay Reeves in Orange Beach, Ala., contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100613/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill