Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Followup: Kill It With Fire

test burn of oil
Environment Canada
In 1993, Canadian and American government scientists conducted a test burn of an
oil slick off the coast of Newfoundland.
In my last post, I rhetorically asked the question, "'cause a sooty fire drifting toward shore has got to be better than oil drifting toward shore... right?" I can see all sorts of potential nastiness arising from this decision, but apparently the answer is "Yes, it is actually a better option than trying to simply contain and clean up the spill."

Like I said, lots of interesting news today. Not necessarily happy news, but interesting news.
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4 comments:

  1. SkinnyDennisApril 28, 2010 at 5:25 PM

    OK, burn it.

    Now we're going to have a 42,000 gallon per day oil fire?

    Do the people at the Springfield Tire Fire know about this?

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  2. LockwoodApril 28, 2010 at 5:41 PM

    SD- I know, right? What could possibly go wrong? I just looked it up: an oil tanker truck holds about 9,000 gallons. So we're going to burn nearly five of those per day? For months?

    Super.

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  3. SkinnyDennisApril 28, 2010 at 9:45 PM

    Lockwood- now the latest estimate is 5000 Barrels a day, or 210,000 gallons.

    What's next?

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousApril 29, 2010 at 7:07 AM

    Lockwood did I ever tell you I worked off shore in 1986 as a geologist with MOC?
    They won't know how much oil is going to be burning until after a couple of days of it being 'produced'. It will all be based on the reservoir size, down hole pressure, and where in the zone it is coming from. Do expect to see an exponential curve with the most oil being burned at first. But after a couple of weeks it should drop off dramatically.
    Ann Willis

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