In the tradition of "Without Bad Luck, We Wouldn't Have Any Luck at All," the National Hurricane Center this morning forecasted a 70% chance that Invest 97, now just south of the Bahamas, would form into a tropical cyclone. Destination? The central Gulf. In his McBriefing yesterday, Kent Wells announced that instead of running and cementing the last liner into relief well 1, they had already run in a storm packer to temporarily seal the well and were preparing to shut down. Here's the storm track by computer model.
For reasons that should be obvious, we at The Daily Hurricane follow hurricanes pretty closely. This storm is in Hurricane Alley, which allows the storm to stay over water virtually all the way into the Gulf allowing it to gain considerable strength. As you can see, the majority of the current storm models has the Deepwater Horizon site dead center. What will happen today or tomorrow will be the decision to evacuate. As we've talked about before, you generally have to start getting people and ships out about 5 days in advance of the storm. We'll be at that decision point very quickly, and other operators have already begun evacuating.
A hurricane, or even a tropical storm, will cause 10 days to 2 weeks of delay. Yesterday, Adm Allen said that the decision whether to open the capping stack or leave it closed was currently being discussed. Without monitoring, there is fear of a major leak causing serious damage to the wellhead endangering future containment efforts. He also said that they would leave an ROV boat as last boat out, since it can travel faster than the service vessels.
Note: I'm at Netroots Nation this week for meetings and will be speaking on a panel about the Deepwater Disaster on Friday at 3 PM PDT. NN will be live streaming the events and you can get details how to watch the sessions here.
More on The Daily Hurricane Energy page.
400 parts per million of carbon has recently been found to be the Arctic Tipping Point, which could conceivably endanger everyone. We are presently approaching 390 ppm. The safe limit is 350 ppm.
According to one scientist, a very thin oil film on the surface of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans that could spread from the Gulf, threatens to raise temperatures toward the catastrophic Tipping Point.
We need bold action to more effectively attack the problems in the Gulf and prevent as much oil as possible from reaching the Atlantic ocean.
If he is correct, far more rapid action to replace oil is urgent.
If the threat is real, most, if not all, renewable energy work should move forward on a 24/7 wartime like basis. Congress should provide whatever incentives are necessary to quickly make that possible.
This little understood potential emergency may threaten us all.
See What to Do! at http://www.aesopinstitute.org The subtitle is: A 5 Step Program to Improve the Odds We Will Survive the Oil Disaster!
Little known and hard to fathom breakthroughs involving radically new energy technologies can help to supersede petroleum much more rapidly than might be readily understood or believed.
See Moving Beyond Oil on the same Aesop Institute website.
We must initiate the action needed to prevent catastrophe!
The life you save may be your own!