Bush ok's Gulf of Mexico Drilling

[H2Andy]

lol

oh man... you're too much

 

[Oceana Diver]

What a great discussion! (although I don't recommend going through it in one sitting :confused_)

Bill51, you mentioned the effects of drilling on deep-sea corals. I would think any potential effects of drilling on DSC would depend on proximity between the two; if you set up the rig directly on a reef, of course there will be problems (for the coral). Sedimentation and smothering might also be an issue, depending on water currents, the amount of sediment kicked up, and again proximity. I don’t know about vibrations. There are only two types of hard DSC (that I know of) in the Gulf (Lophelia sp. and Madrepora sp.) which might or might not withstand being shaken (the Oculina reefs are on the East coast and should be fine, at least from Gulf drilling). Anyone for a little research study?

I have proposed several actions that can be done to curb CO2 emissions in this thread...

Would you mind summing up? They got lost amid the tangents and debates along the way.

Also, any thoughts on on/offshore liquefied natural gas platforms (since there are several in the permitting works)?

 

[archman]

Many people are all for the offshore LNG terminals. Even though the safety protocols on tankers and their terminal infrastructure are dang near bulletproof, people still fear the off chance of a vessel collision in coastal waters. Commercial shipping traffic in most large US seaports is an amazing choreography vaguely similar to air traffic at a busy airport.

Deep coral banks in the GoM (and most other places) are pretty few and far between. Plus any potential benefits they have as spawning grounds for deepwater fishes is offset in that very few deepwater fishes are commerically fished, so their base abundances should be in relatively good standing.

I don't think anyone would plop a rig on or terribly near a Lophelia bank intentionally anyway, given the peculiar media frenzy over them of late and that modern rigs don't have to drill directly underneath their placement point. They can come in sideways from a considerable distance away. I'm sure MMS has some sort of guidelines set down or in the works anyway regarding hard bank avoidance.

Vibration damage should also be a non-issue, as epilithic critters would have to be dang near sitting next to (if not directly attached to) the rig structures. Sediment attenuation would probably damp out seafloor vibrations within a very short distance. Excessive vibration on the upper platforms might knock some loose chunks of Megabalanus off, but its a biofouler and needs to be periodically removed anyhoo. One can even make a tidy profit cleaning them up and selling them in shell shops... they look GREAT on coffee tables!

fftopic:
As a side note: anybody know where I can get my hands on a nice big thorny oyster (Spondylus)? I KNOW some of you rig guys occasionally pick them off. I'll put down hard cash for a decent specimen, heck it doesn't even have to be cleaned. :fruit:

 

[FredT]

Want it live?

 

[AXL72]

Not to mention that vibration dampening devises and strakes are attached to platforms and flowlines to mitigate vortex induced vibration from waves and current. Vibration = fatigue = loss of product = loss of money = bottom line.

HDD (horizontal directional drilling) is used to install flowlines / pipeline through coral areas (ie no trenching = no damage to coral).

Platforms (we call em platforms, not rigs) will not be placed right on top of coral. Direction drilling (not HDD....but directional drilling drill pipe not pipeline pipe) can reach reservoirs from up to 5 to 6 miles away.

Finally, offshore platforms, floating or fixed act as artificail reefs.

 

[archman]

Platforms (we call em platforms, not rigs)

Yeah, the fellows in the oceanography dept. have repeatedly tried to reform me. I was "contaminated" at an earlier point by the fisheries people and (cough) scuba community. I once referred to the Discoverer Enterprise as a "ship rig" and got an industry guy to choke on his coffee.

Fred, if you seriously have some big, dead Spondylus lying around, and they have reasonable spines more or less intact, squirt me a PM.

 

[Bill51]

What a great discussion! (although I don't recommend going through it in one sitting :confused_)

Bill51, you mentioned the effects of drilling on deep-sea corals. I would think any potential effects of drilling on DSC would depend on proximity between the two; if you set up the rig directly on a reef, of course there will be problems (for the coral). Sedimentation and smothering might also be an issue, depending on water currents, the amount of sediment kicked up, and again proximity. I don’t know about vibrations. There are only two types of hard DSC (that I know of) in the Gulf (Lophelia sp. and Madrepora sp.) which might or might not withstand being shaken (the Oculina reefs are on the East coast and should be fine, at least from Gulf drilling). Anyone for a little research study?


Would you mind summing up? They got lost amid the tangents and debates along the way.

Also, any thoughts on on/offshore liquefied natural gas platforms (since there are several in the permitting works)?

I will admit that I have somewhat of an ulterior motive for wanting to see new GoM leases and drilling exploited for additional environmental studies – including to help refine specifics for such things as sediment, sound, vibration and even the ability of the bottom structure to support the increased diversity of marine life that will be attracted to the rigs. In 2012, the Minerals Management Service will be reevaluating all the potential OCS lease areas including the South Atlantic and the Straights areas, and the current Presidential moratoria will expire in June 2012. Subject to a lot of different factors, these 2 areas could come up for analysis and review, and they are both very different environments that what we’re used to drilling in, so I want to see as much research done in the current areas we understand that may be used to at least generate the right questions for what will be coming in a few years. And yes, that is why I want to know how areas such as our Oculina would be impacted if studies show it has potential for drilling. I’d be happy if we put a few pipelines through selected areas of Oculina if for not other reason than to protect them from some of the trawlers.

The most important things that need to be done is realize the best environmental policies are carrots and not sticks, and realize what the long term market effect is going to have on policies. They also have to be results based and not dictated procedures. Both of these mistakes were made in the 1970s regarding conservation and alternative energy, and it ultimate killed the market for energy efficiency rather than encouraging it. Two items that come to mind in this regard are starting off with small changes across a broad economic sector such as: It should also be expanded to include major capital improvements and upgrades that result in energy or pollution savings. The key is to include energy into existing economic structures rather than creating new structures specifically devoted to energy or pollution.

Investment Tax Credits should be restructured to stop encouraging wasteful early obsolescence of equipment and should have an energy efficiency improvement factor included.

Power plants (and all manufacturing operations) should be allowed to make incremental energy (and pollution) improvements under sliding scale grandfather clauses rather than preventing companies from making any improvements because it would require a quantum jump to all current standards. Along the same lines there are some ways major capital improvements to existing equipment should be considered for certain ITCs if sufficient energy efficiency improvements are implemented.

http://www.scubaboard.com/showpost.php?p=2533047&postcount=229

WOW! Offshore LNG appears to be a greater hot button from Homeland Security than environmental issues right now. From the little I know, I think offshore LNG has some great potential for reducing the energy expenditures of delivering fuels to the customer, and anything that helps natural gas compete with oil is pretty all right in my book. Not only do we reduce the CO2 footprint, we greatly reduce all the other pollutants that go along with most oil consumption. From what I heard a couple years ago, and given that I only live 4 miles from Port Canaveral, there are some security factions that hate the amount of energy that can be concentrated in an LNG tanker as they feel it makes it a prime terrorist target. I’ve heard talk of more offshore terminal facilities to handle LNG, and a proposal was floated to help municipalities in port areas create 900 new PSD and police dive teams, so I assume the security issues are being looked at pretty closely. Now if the option is more dive teams that has got to be good for us as the manufactures will increase production and the price of gear will come down.

 

[Bill51]

Thanks to my Texas friends here for the education as I’m more of a policy wonk and have enough troubles keeping up with tying lose ends together that some of the details and terms don’t always stick in this old mind. Is slant drilling still a legitimate term used in the industry? If the DoI and MMS ever get their act together and release all the hearing transcripts I’ll post some my testimony regarding artificial reef potentials and economics.

 

[FredT]

Fred, if you seriously have some big, dead Spondylus lying around, and they have reasonable spines more or less intact, squirt me a PM.

I believe I have several in the shell boxes, but they are packed away under my furniture in the storage shed. When we get back into the house this summer and upack again I'll try and scare one up for you if I can get it away from Jeanne. Live'uns are possible as several dives I intend to do this summer tend to be littered with them bonded to steel. The rust under them separates easier than trying to peel them off a limestone reef. I assume you want both halves.

FT

 

[Trickie Dickie 99]

The reason you can’t find much about oil spills from offshore rigs is because there aren’t many – and none of any size. Since we started the current tracking system in 1980 there has been a grand total of 58,000 barrels of oil spilled due to offshore drilling in the entire continental US and territories with the largest single spill being in the neighborhood of 1,000 barrels. That includes any spills that may have occurred during Katrina or Rita and all the other hurricanes since 1980, and that number is padded with many ancillary spills such as a transport ship supporting a rig that might have a bilge spill.

To put that 58K barrels in perspective, we’re currently monitoring one small area of the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana where environmentalists have been trying to claim the oil industry is responsible for oil washing ashore and we’ve discovered more than 120,000 barrels of oil naturally seep into the Gulf every year in an area where no drilling is allowed or taking place. Over 2/3 of all the oil in the ocean comes from underwater seepage, and a major portion of the remaining third is from natural ground seepage in coastal areas. The other major sources of oil in the oceans is from ground run off of streets and from tanker operations outside the US or non-US ships.

This is a major step forward to improving our environment on many levels. Industry is most excited about the chance to tap into the vast (>1 trillion cf) natural gas reserves off shore and oil is a secondary consideration at this time. Tapping in to this gas reserve will not only allow us to convert many oil fired facilities to gas reducing both the air pollution of burning oil and the risk of oil spills by the hundreds of oil barges moving around our SE costal areas – but some studies are indicating that by removing some of this high pressure gas in the areas of deeper oil pockets we might reduce the amount of underwater natural oil seepage and actually clean up the water in some coastal areas.

The chances of oil spills is 5 times greater during transport than any other phase of oil production, and a majority of our oil, and the rest of the world’s, is shipped to us from foreign countries on foreign ships that do not meet environmental or safety standards that is required of American operators. This legislation will allow companies to do more extensive exploration for oil on our own continental shelf where conservative estimates indicate there may be as much as 10 times as much oil as current proven reserves indicates. Just our known reserves in off limit offshore locations right now is equal to 60 years of Persian Gulf imports. By opening these areas up for exploration we’ll probably see those reserve figures climb dramatically given the recent discoveries at the 30,000’ level, and we’ll have that oil production 100% under American environmental and safety controls reducing the chances of foreign ships polluting the ocean bringing oil to us from around the world.

We currently spend millions of dollars a year sinking ships and other objects as artificial reefs, yet one drilling rig provides more marine habitat shelter than 5 major ship reefs – without costing the taxpayers one cent. While most artificial reefs have less than 50’ of vertical relief, it’s not uncommon to have rigs with over 1,000’ of water column relief making them more similar to the great diving walls of Cozumel or Grand Turk than traditional coastal reefs. This vertical relief is what brings the highest concentration of marine diversity to the sites as you’ll have deep-water pelagics existing closely with the shallow corals near the top of the rig – just like seeing big sharks near the top of many wall dives.

Personally I campaigned to have the drilling limits set at 50 miles rather than 125 miles to make the rigs more practical and accessible for dive and fishing operators, but I guess I’ll have to settle for what we got this time around. We also got pretty good state royalty deals that will not only fully fund any land based infrastructure needed to support the rigs, but will also feed some general budget issues including environmental projects.

Good post.