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Timeline: Gulf of Mexico oil spill
ABU DHABI/HOUSTON |
ABU DHABI/HOUSTON (Reuters) - Millions of gallons/liters of oil have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico since an April 20 explosion on a drilling rig triggered the worst spill in U.S. history.
Below is a timeline of the disaster and its impact.
April 20, 2010 - Explosion and fire on Transocean Ltd's drilling rig Deepwater Horizon licensed to BP Plc; 11 workers are killed. The rig was drilling in BP's Macondo project 42 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana, beneath about 5,000 feet of water and 13,000 feet under the seabed.
April 22 - The Deepwater Horizon rig, valued at more than $560 million, sinks and a 5-mile oil slick forms.
April 25 - Efforts to activate the well's blowout preventer fail.
April 29 - U.S. President Barack Obama pledges "every single available resource," including the U.S. military, to contain the spreading spill and says BP is responsible for the clean-up.
April 30 - An Obama aide says no drilling will be allowed in new areas, as the president had recently proposed, until the cause of the Deepwater Horizon accident is known.
-- BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward says the company takes full responsibility and will pay all legitimate claims and the cost of the clean-up.
May 2 - Obama visits the Gulf Coast. U.S. officials close areas affected by the spill to fishing for 10 days. BP starts drilling a relief well alongside the failed well, a process that may take two to three months to complete.
May 7 - An attempt to place a containment dome over the spewing well fails when the device is rendered useless by frozen hydrocarbons that clogged it.
May 11/12 - Executives from BP, Transocean and Halliburton appear at congressional hearings in Washington. The executives blame each other's companies.
May 14 - Obama slams companies involved in the spill, criticizing them for a "ridiculous spectacle" of publicly trading blame in his sternest comments yet.
May 19 - The first heavy oil from the spill hits fragile Louisiana marshlands. Part of the slick enters a powerful current that could carry it to the Florida Keys and beyond.
May 28 - Obama tours the Louisiana coast, saying "I am the president and the buck stops with me."
-- BP's Hayward flies over the Gulf.
May 29 - BP says the complex "top kill" maneuver, started three days earlier to plug the well, has failed.
June 1 - BP shares plunge 17 percent in London trading, wiping $23 billion off its market value, on news the latest attempt to plug the well has failed.
-- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says the Justice Department has launched a criminal and civil investigation into the rig explosion and the spill.
June 2 - BP tries another capping strategy but has difficulty cutting off a leaking riser pipe.
-- U.S. authorities expand fishing restrictions to cover 37 percent of U.S. federal waters in the Gulf.
June 4 - Obama, on his third trip to the region, warns BP against skimping on compensation to residents and businesses.
June 8 - Obama says he wants to know "whose ass to kick" over the spill, adding to the pressure on BP.
-- U.S. weather forecasters give their first confirmation that some of the oil leaking has lingered beneath the surface rather than rising to the top.
June 9 - U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says BP must pay the salaries of thousands of workers laid off by a moratorium on drilling, at a congressional hearing.
June 10 - In his first comments, Prime Minister David Cameron says Britain is ready to help BP deal with the spill.
-- U.S. scientists double their estimates of the amount of oil gushing from the well, saying between 20,000 and 40,000 barrels (840,000 and 1.7 million gallons/3.2 million and 6.4 million liters) flowed out before June 3.
June 11 - Supportive comments from Britain lift BP's shares in London by 6.4 percent. But the rise does not mend the damage done -- the company is worth 70 billion pounds ($102 billion) against more than 120 billion pounds in April.
June 14 - Obama, on his fourth trip to the Gulf, says he will press BP executives at a White House meeting on June 16 to deal "justly, fairly and promptly" with damage claims.
-- Two U.S. lawmakers release a letter to Hayward saying: "It appears that BP repeatedly chose risky procedures in order to reduce costs and save time and made minimal efforts to contain the added risk."
June 15 - Lawmakers summon top executives from Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and BP.
-- Obama says in his first televised speech from the Oval Office: "But make no mistake: we will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused."
June 16 - BP agrees to set up a $20 billion fund for damage claims from the spill, suspends dividend payments to shareholders and says it will pay $100 million to workers idled by the six-month moratorium on deep-sea drilling.
June 17 - Hayward faces the wrath of U.S. lawmakers as he appears before a congressional hearing. He apologizes for the spill and says everything is being done to stop it. Members of Congress accuse BP of cutting corners for the sake of profit.
June 18 - Anadarko Petroleum, part owner of the gushing well, says BP's behavior before the blowout was "reckless" and likely represented "gross negligence or willful misconduct" that would affect obligations of the well owners under their operating agreement.
June 20 - Internal BP document released by U.S. congressman shows BP estimates that a worst-case scenario rate could be 100,000 barrels (4.2 million gallons/15.9 million liters) a day. This is far higher than the U.S. government estimate of 60,000 barrels (2.5 million gallons/9.5 million liters) a day.
June 22 - Hayward is handing day-to-day control of the spill operation to Bob Dudley -- a reflection, says BP, of the need for the CEO to return to other aspects of the business.
June 24 - A U.S. judge refuses to put on hold his decision to lift a ban on deepwater drilling imposed after the spill.
June 28 - BP is forced to defend its chief executive after Russia's deputy prime minister said he expected Hayward to resign soon.
June 30 - Hurricane Alex, later downgraded to a tropical storm, moved slowly in Gulf waters, disrupting the cleanup, and threatening to push more oily water onshore.
-- President Obama formally directs officials to draw up a long-term economic and environmental plan to help the Gulf Coast region get back on its feet after the oil spill.
July 1 - BP shares gain, with traders initially citing talk, quickly shot down, that it had capped the leaking well.
July 3 - A supertanker converted into a "super skimmer" begins tests. The vessel can remove up to 500,000 barrels (21 million gallons/79.5 million liters) of oil and water from the sea surface a day.
July 5 - BP says that the cost of the spill had reached $3.12 billion.
July 6 - Summer storms push oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill deeper into Louisiana's wetlands and temporarily slow efforts to contain damage.
-- The storms are also responsible for washing oil into Lake Pontchartrain, bordering New Orleans, further polluting Mississippi's beaches and halting tests on a supertanker adapted to skim large quantities of oil from the surface.
July 7 - Tests show tar balls washed up on the Texas coast are from the spill, meaning every U.S. Gulf state -- Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and now Texas -- has been soiled by the spill.
(Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit)
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This is an upward flow against gravity that pulls down. It can be stopped by some easy tricks on fluid dynamics using concepts of surface transport of particles. Bubbling flow upward can be clogged by high density objects coming down by gravity pull.
Instead of doing a junk shot with gulf balls and shredded tires they were supposed to put high density and sinking geometry to clog the well. We do it a lot in Soil Science and the Dust Bowl provides insights on surface transport of particles by erosion regarding detachment, transport, and deposition.
Hydrology is being curbed in the patenting affairs and technological development deeply missing now to solve simple problems like clogging a spilling well.
The use of golf balls in the junk shot is a clear evidence that the experts have no handle on deep Hydrology. I am not surprised since a sort of ‘scientific discovery’ in Hydrodynamics is being constantly violated by lay people as Patent Examiners, Patent Attorneys, and Scientists. Try to find any address of wick/wicking on Hydrology textbooks and you will see that this oil spill is something that could have been stopped on the day ONE if science were respected and honored. USPTO has near 6,000 Patent Examiners and it already confirmed that none of them is a Hydrologist!
This OIL SPILL is a consequence of a bunch of people pretending to be smart overstepping the boundaries of a classic science called HYDROLOGY.
Look at this. Mr. Obama assigned Dr. Regina Benjamin 42 lbs overweight to take care of your health system. A person near obese in the health system that cannot help herself is going to provide Americans insights to shed weight and be healthy. This way Americans are becoming 85% obese by 2040.
I suggested Mr. Obama to resign because my advanced breakthrough ‘scientific discovery’ in Hydrodynamics is being violated by flawed patents that even do not work. Why to ignore science?
Just imagine if the well could be clogged in few hours by appropriate approach making gravity pull heavy objects downward on a bubbling upward flow with variable flow velocity due to the dragging effect of well casing.
The relief wells may not work as clay in the mud can only clog tiny pores but fail on cracks and fissures.
What is the chance that PB hires any Soil Scientist in the technical staff? What is the chance that BP Engineers ever learned about Soil Erosion to understand detachment, transport, and deposition of particles in a dynamic flow?
I believe this entire nightmare is preventable and consequence of a failing leadership you have.
How would I stop the spill?
Easily running some trials with a visible display employing translucent 22 in pipes with similar upward flow and check the dragging effect on many particle sizes and formats. The bubbling effect should increase fall by reducing the fluid density, as well as variable radial flow velocity which is higher in the center and lower around the containment case as a stationary surface.
When we start injecting the junk shot we know what to expect and change the particles sizes and formats as the velocity of spill reduces by the this downward effect from the falling particles. Lower and lower velocity suggests smaller and smaller particles until clay can be used to seal tiny pores inside the well lumen.
What am I charging for it?
I just want USPTO to stop violating my ‘scientific discovery’ US pat. 6,766,817 with flawed patents that even do not work shamefully harming and dishonoring HYDROLOGY. I got PhD at Penn State University and Bill Clinton was the speecher of my commencement on May 10, 1996.
CNN is controlling info by removing comments on its website. I am curious who takes advantages by this ongoing catastrophe.
oh, yeah, everything is very simple in theory:-) but these solutions need to be able to deal with very massive-solid matter. where would you like to get so advanced techs, from zone 51?:-D
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