Dear Peter,
Thanks for your reply. Stephen has suggested a means of capturing
methane, which would catch the oil as well, using a large area of
plastic membrane held down at its edges by weighted tyres (or something
just heavier than water). It wouldn't solve the general problem of
natural blow-out, e.g. in ESAS, which concerns Shakhova et al. (2008)
[1], because you would not know in advance where the blow-out might take
place; but it could solve the problem when there is drilling on a
particular site - so the blow-out is restricted to a limited, known area
(less than say 1 km-2). The membrane would be submerged and held over
the danger area (anchored by the weights) when the sea ice has
retreated. In a blow-out, the gas would push the membrane up to the
surface - under the ice if there is ice - with the weights still holding
down the edges. So you'd get something looking like an underwater
hot-air balloon! You could then capture or destroy the oil and gas when
the ice has retreated. Is this the kind of thing that the industry is
thinking about?
Cheers,
John
---
On 21/06/2011 09:07, P. Wadhams wrote:
Dear John, Generally the assumption is that if there is an under-ice
blowout, oil and gas will come out together, with the oil droplets
coating the gas bubbles and being carried up by them. So the result is
a bubble plume carrying oil up to the surface. Industry and government
people concerned with coping with this emphasise the importance of the
oil as a pollutant, and treat the gas as either something that can be
allowed to escape from the surface, or something that can be ignited.
There is no specific programme to deal with a gas leak as such, Best
wishes Peter
On Jun 21 2011, John Nissen wrote:
Dear Peter,
This [1] could be relevant to your workshop on oil under sea ice,
late September in Italy.
Does anybody know how they'd deal with major gas (methane) leak when
drilling in the Arctic? This would be relevant to our "methane
busting" workshop, London, 3-4 September, where we will brainstorm on
methods to prevent potentially huge quantities of Arctic methane
reaching the atmosphere. Who is an expert on gas leaks, that we
could invite?
Cheers,
John
---
[1] http://planetark.org/wen/62377
A major offshore Arctic oil spill could severely challenge the Coast
Guard, with no available infrastructure to base rescue and clean-up
operations, the Coast Guard commandant said on Monday.
"There is nothing up there to operate from at present and we're
really starting from ground zero," said Adm. Robert Papp Jr. "Now's
the time to be not just talking about it, but acting about it."
Several major oil companies, notably Royal Dutch Shell, have acquired
leases to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off Alaska. Arctic
waters are likely to be accessible to humans for longer periods as
the planet heats up.
In May, the extent of Arctic ice was the third-smallest since
satellites began collecting data in 1979, according to the U.S.
National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Noting that the Coast Guard sent 3,000 people to work on the 2010 BP
oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Papp told reporters at a government
symposium on shrinking Arctic ice: "No way we could deploy several
thousand people as we did in the Deepwater Horizon spill."
The Coast Guard has no helicopters based on Alaska's North Slope, and
no U.S. agency has a helicopter there equipped to perform rescues at
sea, he said. There are no facilities that could serve as temporary
hangars for equipment, or any small boat facilities.
Housing for any emergency workers amounts to a few dozen hotel rooms,
he said.
LIQUID FUEL TURNS TO GEL
Even as the Arctic warms -- and it is warming faster than lower
latitudes -- temperatures are still extremely cold, which means
equipment built for operations in temperate zones need to be tested
for fitness in the far north.
For example, the Coast Guard flew a basic military cargo plane, the
C-130, in the Arctic and found that the craft's liquid fuel turned
into a gel when temperatures dipped below a certain level unless
heaters were applied to it, Papp said.
Only one U.S. icebreaker ship will be under way this year, he said.
Another is being decommissioned and a third ship is being updated.
Papp said China is building what will be the most powerful
conventional icebreaker in the world.
He praised the signing last month of the Arctic Search and Rescue
Agreement, where eight Arctic nations -- Canada, Denmark, Finland,
Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States -- agreed to
cooperate on rescues above the Arctic Circle.
The United States also needs to ratify the Law of the Sea treaty,
Papp said. He said other Arctic nations are using this pact to stake
claims to swaths of the extended continental shelf in the Arctic, and
that U.S. ratification would enable the United States to extend its
sovereignty there as well.
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