BP Discharge Rate

May 26, 2010 – 11:40 PM

I was talking to a friend of mine today who knows about pumps and asked him what he reckoned the velocity of the BP blow out to be from the video feed. He guessed about 3 km/hour (1.88 mph). (In these sorts of things, I value opinions from practical guys – I don’t think that you need to be a professor of fluid mechanics to guess at flow velocities.)

Let’s assume that his guess is right within an order of magnitude/ The diameter of the riser pipe is apparently 21 inches =21*.0254 m= 0.5334 m. The volume of the blow out would therefore be: 3000 (m/hr) *pi *( 0.5334/2)^2 = 670.374 m^3/hour = 670,374 liters/hour.

One bbl oil = 158.987 liters. Thus 670,374/158.987 = 4216 barrels/hour
I.e. 101,184 barrels/day. (Phil Worley of Purdue estimated 70,000 bbl/day.

In order to get 5,000 barrels/day, you would have to have a discharge velocity of 0.1 mph instead of my friend’s guess of 2 mph or a smaller effective pipe diameter. [See update below as this latter seems to be the case, though not down to 5,000 bbl/day. Looks like 15-20,000 is more probable.]

I wonder how they arrived at their estimate of 5,000 barrels/day. Maybe their Group Vice President, Research and Engineering should have spent more time trying to figure this out and less trying to hide the trick to hide the decline.

Update – good news. It appears that the “top kill” was successful and the blow out is sealed. The article contained new estimates of discharge rates by the US Geological Survey about 3-4 times higher than BP’s, but not 10-20 times higher:

Marcia McNutt, the director of the US Geological Survey, estimated that the flow ranged from 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day.

Up to now, BP estimated the leak at 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) per day, but has said that figure is unreliable.

Update: Re-doing these calculations with suggestions made by readers – 9 7/8″ pipe and 50% gas and the same discharge velocity (3 km/hour) yields a bit over 11,000 bbl/day.

Pipe area is pi *(0.250825/2)^2 # 0.0494119 m^2
Volume discharge is 0.0494119* 3000 # 148.2357 m^3/hour
i.e. 148.2357 *1000 /158.987 #932.3762 #bbl/hour
Oil discharge is 24 hours *932.3762 bbl/hour *.5 # 11188.51 bbl/day

Update June 16 – here current estimates are about 60,000 bbl/day

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (114)

BP and the Climategate Inquiry

May 21, 2010 – 1:59 PM

Four weeks ago, how many of you knew that BP was the largest oil and gas producer in the United States – larger than ExxonMobil? Put up your hands. Nobody? I didn’t either.

How many of you had seen BP’s green advertisements – “beyond petroleum”, wind turbines turning lazily in a summer breeze – sort of a corporate equivalent of gambolling in a meadow in slow motion? All of you? Thought so.

Recent events have obviously placed BP into the public eye – with questions now being asked about their green lobbying.

What has this to do with Climategate inquiries?

David Eyton, BP Group Vice President, Research & Technology, is a member of the Muir Russell panel. Only one submission (mine) criticized his presence on the Muir Russell panel. There was total radio silence from climate scientists. Why was this perpetually outraged community so silent? More on this later.

Eyton’s bio is particularly interesting in the present circumstances.

David joined BP in 1982 from Cambridge University with an Engineering degree. During his early career, he held a number of Petroleum Engineering, Commercial and Business Management positions. In 1996, he was named General Manager of BP’s North West Shelf interest in Australia. David later managed Wytch Farm in the UK and then BP’s Gas Businesses in Trinidad. In September 2001, he became Lord John Browne’s Executive Assistant in the company’s London headquarters. Following that assignment, David was Vice President of Deepwater Developments in the Gulf of Mexico and prior to his current role was BP’s Exploration and Production Group Vice President for Technology.

That’s right — Vice President, Deepwater Developments Gulf of Mexico. BP’s Deepwater Gulf of Mexico operations are what make it the largest oil producer in the United States. A big and important job, to say the least. So what’s our David doing making little analyses of CRU emails for the Muir Russell inquiry? See minutes here. Definitely a dig-here.

It’s interesting to re-examine Eyton’s prior publications both in the context of the BP well blow out and the Muir Rusell inquiry.

In 2005, Eyton published The journey to deepwater operatorship, which I’ve placed online here. Eyton’s reflections show a clear awareness of the new and difficult technical problems of operating in the deep and ultra-deep:

Deepwater GoM may be one of the most prolific new basins in the world, but it is still a frontier province. … And in addition, we have to cope with extreme natural environments, the “ultra-deep” in terms of both reservoir and water depths, complex seabed geotechnics and severe metocean conditions in the form of both loop currents and hurricanes.

These are new challenges for the industry, and challenges which are being addressed at an ever-increasing pace. We find ourselves designing floating systems for 10 000 ft of water depth before the lessons of working in 6000 ft have been fully identified. And these new challenges are not just depth-related. Failure mechanisms, such as fatigue, driven by vortex-induced vibration (VIV) and vessel motion, are time-dependent and may take years to become apparent. The same is true of equipment reliability. We know the premium associated with hardware reliability is high, but at this stage, operators still have a limited failure database for forecasting the required levels of intervention in ever-deeper and more remote environments.

Eyton counselled:

In particular, be rigorous in front end loading, and very clear about the scale and nature of the “size of the step” you are seeking to take. Recognize that what may initially appear to be an incremental change can often turn out to be much more profound. Develop multiple contingency plans. And be prepared to work closely with suppliers to drive up reliability and reduce risk.

Eyton’s presentation is noted in a near-contemporary July 2005 conference. The paragraph immediately following Eyton’s presentation described a 1628 design failure arising from the left hand not reconciling with the right hand:

The Swedish warship Vasa, with a fast keel and the finest guns, suffered from design changes that caused the ship to sink within 1 nautical mile of the start of her maiden voyage in 1628. Last-minute design modifications ordered by the king without consulting expert partners caused the costly vessel to go under. Panel Moderator Sandeep Khurana, Senior Specialist with J.P. Kenny Inc., invited operators and contractors to examine oil and gas industry collaboration through lenses of the same color. Deepwater fields are becoming more complex and challenging, and average field size is falling slightly, so there is a real need for innovation in contracting to bring projects through to success. “Investments are high and failure is not an option, so how do we collaborate?” asked Khurana. “Is a commercial arrangement the path to perfect collaboration? Are there inherent conflicts in the way we perceive our roles and rewards? How do operator/contractor objectives mesh?”

Questions that seem timely when BP, Transocean and Haliburton try to blame the other. The author of this analogy, Don Vardeman,
Kerr-McGee Vice President Marine Engineering, pointed out that the same barriers to collaboration on large project developments exist today as they did in 1628, listed these impediments to successful collaboration:

• Imitation rather than real understanding of ideas.
• Goal confusion.
• Obsession with speed.
• Failure to incorporate test feedback.
• Communication barriers.
• Poor organizational memory or knowledge transfer.
• Meddling by top management.

In 2008, as noted above, Eyton was appointed Group Vice President, Research & Technology.

He attended the first meeting of the Muir Russell inquiry on Feb 4, 2010.

A few days later (Feb 9, 2010), he attended the Carbon Mitigation Initiative Ninth Annual Meeting Conference at Princeton – a BP sponsored program – where he presented the BP Review of 2009. Michael Oppenheimer, who appeared opposite me in my CNN appearance on Campbell Brown, is shown as a key figure in the Initiative. A variety of BP executives attended the conference; also in attendance were Daniel Schrag, Director of the Center for the Environment, Harvard University, Steven Hamburg, Chief Scientist, Environmental Defense Fund and a number of other notables.

Due to this prior commitment, Eyton missed the press conference unveiling the Muir Russell inquiry on Feb 11. His attendance at the Muir Russell meeting of Feb 25 is noted, together with the item that UEA had not received money from BP in recent years (though they had contributed generously to Geoffrey Boulton’s Royal Society of Edinburgh, which was conducting the inquiry).

At the March 20 meeting, Eyton was said to have presented an analysis of emails – to be published on completion – I don’t know how someone with as big a job as Eyton would be able to do the sort of thorough job of analyzing the emails that he would expect of an engineer for a BP offshore exploration rig. Eyton attended the April 1 Muir Russell telecon meeting, at which a David Walker materializes as a staffer for the first time (joining Mike Granatt of Luther Pendragon communications and William Hardie of Roy Soc Ediburgh).

On April 19, Eyton was scheduled to deliver a speech in Stanford on governance but was grounded by the Iceland ash. The speech is online here.

Eyton’s speech on governance distilled some important lessons from BP’s operations that Muir Russell (and Eyton) have flouted in their conduct of the Muir Russell inquiry. Eyton discussed the problems of resolving disputes in a community concluding that: unless citizens feel some kind of ownership in the project, you are not going to be successful.

In some instances, the challenges are so great that we form independent advisory committees, also known as ‘blue ribbon’ panels.

For example, in Azerbaijan, we had to build a pipeline from Baku to Tbilisi through Georgia and Turkey at a time when there were quite a few tensions there. We listened to and learned from a wide range of international, national and local stakeholders. The independent panel, under Jan Leschly’s chairmanship, advised us on the things that might not naturally occur to us, including the effects on the local community and political, economic and social conditions. We also sought advice from scientists who had a thorough understanding of that country’s geology. Today the pipeline is carrying one million barrels per day to the Mediterranean.

The same thing happened in West Papua, where we had to move a village in order to be able to build the plant. That is an extremely difficult thing to do well. This time, the independent panel was chaired by former US Senator George Mitchell and included local community leaders. All parties worked together not just to move part of the village, but to rebuild it better. The project is operational today, and the local residents seem happy with the results.

The lesson is: unless citizens feel some kind of ownership in the project, you are not going to be successful.

Unless citizens feel some kind of ownership….

Despite these wise words about governance, the Muir Russell has done exactly the opposite. Despite Muir Russell’s undertaking to exclude panelists with ties to the university or to the climate science debate, Geoffrey Boulton was appointed. Graham Stringer pointed out the panel’s lack of balance, but Muir Russell repudiated the point. Stringer observed: “I think you might find more credibility to your report if you have reputable scientists from both sides. It is a political issue really.” Stringer’s point here is the same point that Eyton had previously made – but ignored in his capacity as a Muir Russell panelist.

The lack of representation is made worse by the failure of the Muir Russell inquiry (or other inquiries) to make the slightest effort to talk to key critics and Climategate targets. The Oxburgh “inquiry” was even worse – breaking every governance rule described in Eyton’s speech.

Given that Eyton is BP Group Vice President for Research & Technology – especially one with prior direct experience in the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater, one would expect Eyton to be visible in the present controversy. But I’ve only seen one mention so far, Platt’s reporting a May 17 statement by Eyton to a conference in Australia. (I guess Eyton was taking a break from analyzing CRU emails.)

In my February submission, I had opposed Eyton’s membership on this panel precisely because of his oil company connections. Now I’m rather looking forward to seeing BP’s position on using a “trick … to hide the decline”. If similar language crops in BP’s correspondence about the Gulf of Mexico deepwater, I doubt whether US regulators would be quite as blase as climate scientists.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (74)

Heartland Presentation

May 19, 2010 – 3:26 PM

I’ll post up illustrated speaking notes in a day or two, as well as some comments. May 20 – Annotated version online here.

I’ve noticed two incomplete versions online.

One version is on Youtube in three parts here. It misses the last few minutes of the talk, but I prefer this version to the version on the Heartland website (which presently stalls at 20:46) because it includes some of the graphics – which were shown on a large screen to the audience and were an integral part of the presentation – and because it picks up audience reaction to the occasional ironic remark a little better.

Youtube part 1

Youtube part 2

Youtube part 3

Audio with ending of talk: Here is the Heartland audio which contains the end of the talk.

I’ll comment more on this later, but I’ll pick up on a couple of points that is occasioning blog discussion. These arise out of caveats at the beginning and end of my talk (the latter not online at present). In questions afterwards, people challenged me for not being angry, for discouraging angriness and for criticizing Cuccinelli. I received dozens of compliments from people at the conference.

Some blog characterization of my comments e.g. at Keith Kloor and Pielk Jr- somewhat mischaracterize my comments. Academics tend to be surprisingly poor listeners – all too often they fold people’s comments into their preconceived framework. Lawyers tend to be far better listeners.

CA readers know that I express myself carefully and try to make my opinions as narrow and precise as possible. As I previously stated in several CA posts, I disagree with Cuccinelli for a variety of reasons. Cuccinelli is seeking to establish an offence under section 8.01 -263.1 of Virginia act (here). I discussed this briefly in my speech as follows:

Despite the failures of the inquiries to do their job, I strongly disagree with Cuccinelli’s recent investigation of potential financial abuse. Regardless of what one may think of the quality of Mann’s work, he has published diligently. In my opinion, Cuccinelli’s actions are an abuse of administrative prerogative that on the one hand is unfair to Mann and on the other provides easy fodder for people to avoid dealing with the real issues.

All I’m saying here is that I do not think that there is prima facie evidence of a section 8.01 offence. I realize that Cuccinelli has the “right” to investigate section 8.01 offences, but I do not believe that his present interest in Mann arises out of search criteria arising out of section 8.01 – there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of government expenditures that would be on a short list generated by accounting criteria. This is too much like instigating out a tax audit on political enemies.

There are real issues in this file that should have been investigated by the appropriate inquiries. People who are worried about these things should complain to institutions responsible for the inquiries – not instigate section 8.01 investigations.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (99)

Beddington and the Oxburgh Inquiry

May 19, 2010 – 2:38 PM

The UK government has provided an incomplete response to Andrew Montford’s FOI request for copies of “correspondence or documentation” related to “the appointment of the [Oxburgh} panel or its deliberations”. However, even the incomplete information so far shows that UK government Chief Scientist John Beddington played a critical role. In addition, it contains the remarkable information that US National Academy of Sciences President Ralph Cicerone was charged with contacting (“warming up”) the American panelists and UK National Academy of Sciences President Martin Rees with contacting(“warming up”) the UK panelists. Here is the correspondence obtained so far (attachments are mentioned and not provided and the existence of other correspondence is certainly implied). Original documents are here.

Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in FOIA | Tagged , , , | Comments (33)

The “Hartwell Paper”

May 11, 2010 – 1:45 PM

Pielke Jr and 13 other authors have published a paper advocating a “re-framing” of climate policy. Co-authors that may be somewhat familiar to CA readers include Atte Korhola and Mike Hulme (a seemingly anomalous search term in the Climategate letters). Daniel Sarewitz checked in briefly at CA a few years ago. The coauthors tend to be economists.

They observe the lack of accomplishment of climate policy over the past 15 years and argue that policy has been too heavily focused on mechanisms like cap-and-trade and demand targets and insufficiently focused on supply-side (they express it a little differently, but I think that this characterization is fair.)

They argue that the confluence of Copenhagen and Climategate creates an excellent opportunity for re-framing.

Contrary to much present spin, they say that Climategate was an extremely important event, calling it, together with the Copenhagen, one of two “watersheds” in climate policy:

The second watershed is to be found within the science of climate change. It was crossed on 17th November. The climate science community has experienced an accelerated erosion of public trust following the posting on that date of more than a 1,000 emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit.[2] These emails, whose authenticity is not denied, suggested that scientists may have been acting outside publicly understood norms of science in their efforts to bolster their own views and to discredit the views of those with whom they disagreed.[3]

They provide a nice citation [3] of Andrew Montford’s book:

The principal e-mails of concern are reproduced and discussed in A.W. Montford, The Hockey Stick Illusion, London: Stacey International, 2010, pp. 402–49. This work conveniently relates the topics back to a detailed narrative of the major disputes in climate science, and specifically paleoclimate studies, with which much of the Climatic Research Unit archive is concerned.

They repudiate the disinformation from the climate science community that any of the inquiries have actually investigated matters at issue:

Hitherto, none of the specific critiques of this work by those auditing it have been adjudicated by reviews of the matter, and indeed were explicitly not investigated by the Oxburgh review (para. 9)

They dance around nuclear power, arguing that radical new technologies are needed to meet acceptable cost targets, but do not mention that Deutch et al 2009 url (which they cite) had observed that there were then about 44 nuclear plants under construction around the world in 12 countries, principally China, Russia, India and Korea – which suggests to me that a major reason why there were no new nuclear plants then under construction in the U.S. (one was being refurbished) is due at least in part to self-imposed regulatory issues and the huge costs associated with running the gauntlet of the present U.S. regulatory system.

I haven’t examined the policy options closely and the following point is an opinion that is a general impression only – one in which I’m speaking as a (Canadian) citizen rather than a specialist. Surely one of the nettles that has to be grasped by the environmental movement in the U.S. and Europe is confronting the fact that prescribing feel-good remedies like wind power and tree-planting carbon credits as a solution for present energy and climate problems is no better than prescribing Laetrile for cancer. (They may not do any actual harm, but, to the extent that people are tricked into thinking that they might be a solution, they do do harm.) Once this nettle is grasped, then there would probably be an opportunity to reform the regulatory system so that nuclear plants can be built in the U.S. as well as in Pakistan and the Ukraine.

Peter Gleick and his claque say that we have to do “something” right away – though the “something” seems all too often to be no better than Laetrile or the sale of indulgences. Better that we have “change we can believe in”.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (297)

Trinity College Presentation, March 2010

May 6, 2010 – 8:39 AM

I mentioned in March that I was giving a presentation “next Wednesday”on Climategate at Trinity College, University of Toronto. (I’m an alumnus and was a guest member of the Senior Common Room last year.)

I meant to post up my talk at the time but forgot to do so and remedy the situation today. Here it is. In the original presentation, I inserted some video clips into the PowerPoint presentation. I regard Jon Stewart’s remarks as more insightful than any of the inquiries.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in climategate | Comments (55)

AR4 on “1998 was the warmest year”

May 3, 2010 – 1:20 PM

As most CA readers know, a few years ago, I wondered how they knew that 1998 was the warmest year in a millennium – a claim that you don’t see in AR4. Nor, at first (second or even fifth) glance does the assertion, once so prominent, even seem to be addressed in AR4.

The Climategate letters offer an interesting vignette. Chapter 6 authors were not unaware of the matter and worked over language on the issue like New York or London lawyers, eventually inserting a clause deep in the chapter that gave them cover, intentionally leaving the issue out of the chapter Executive Summary. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in climategate, IPCC | Tagged | Comments (45)

The Virginia Statute

May 3, 2010 – 11:44 AM

How many readers criticizing me for calling Cuccinelli out have bothered reading the actual Virginia statute?

Let’s consider something practical – like Mann’s failing to disclose the adverse verification r2 results – and see whether it fits within the statute. Cuccinelli doesn’t need to go fishing around emails to find this issue. It’s been on the table for a long time – it was even mentioned in Cicerone’s letter to Barton. Despite claims to the contrary, this piece of potential misconduct has never been investigated. Yes, inquiries have been formed, but they’ve all avoided this issue.

But the problem, folks, is that however much you want to fume about life, the Virginia statute in question offers no particular relief.

Here are the causes of action. Even if Mann were shown to have knowingly withheld an adverse verification r2 result, I don’t see how that fits into any of the following causes of action, all of which are structured towards relatively narrow financial things like fake invoices. Trying to shoehorn verification r2 statistics into these causes of action is the wrong case.

§ 8.01-216.3. False claims; civil penalty.

A. Any person who:

1. Knowingly presents, or causes to be presented, to an officer or employee of the Commonwealth a false or fraudulent claim for payment or approval;

2. Knowingly makes, uses, or causes to be made or used, a false record or statement to get a false or fraudulent claim paid or approved by the Commonwealth;

3. Conspires to defraud the Commonwealth by getting a false or fraudulent claim allowed or paid;

4. Has possession, custody, or control of property or money used, or to be used, by the Commonwealth and, intending to defraud the Commonwealth or willfully to conceal the property, delivers, or causes to be delivered, less property than the amount for which the person receives a certificate or receipt;

5. Authorizes to make or deliver a document certifying receipt of property used, or to be used, by the Commonwealth and, intending to defraud the Commonwealth, makes or delivers the receipt without completely knowing that the information on the receipt is true;

6. Knowingly buys or receives as a pledge of an obligation or debt, public property from an officer or employee of the Commonwealth who lawfully may not sell or pledge the property; or

7. Knowingly makes, uses, or causes to be made or used, a false record or statement to conceal, avoid, or decrease an obligation to pay or transmit money or property to the Commonwealth;

shall be liable to the Commonwealth for a civil penalty of not less than $5,000 and not more than $10,000, plus three times the amount of damages sustained by the Commonwealth.

In addition to the above, the statute of limitation would preclude anything done in the course of MB98 and MBH99, as well as the trick to hide the decline:

§ 8.01-216.9. Procedure; statute of limitations.

A subpoena requiring the attendance of a witness at a trial or hearing conducted under this article may be served at any place in the Commonwealth.

A civil action under § 8.01-216.5 may not be brought (i) more than six years after the date on which the violation is committed or (ii) more than three years after the date when facts material to the right of action are known or reasonably should have been known by the official of the Commonwealth charged with responsibility to act in the circumstances, but in that event no more than ten years after the date on which the violation is committed, whichever occurs last.

I don’t see any connection between Mann’s emails and offences under this statute. As such, Cuccinelli’s actions seem to me to be a capricious exercise of executive power.

People also need to realize that exercises like Cuccinelli’s debase legitimate exercise of executive power.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (33)

Correspondence with the University of Virginia

May 3, 2010 – 11:03 AM

While we’re talking about the University of Virginia, I’ll report today on two complaints filed by Ross and I in April 2005 with the University of Virginia and their handling by then President John Casteen and Vice President Ariel Gomez. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (18)

Cuccinelli v Mann

May 2, 2010 – 5:16 PM

This is a repugnant piece of over-zealousness by the Virginia Attorney General, that I condemn.

Obviously, I think that Mannian effusions have negligible scientific value. However, the people in the field think otherwise and organizations like NSF seem ready and willing to lavishly fund analysis that seems to me to be little more than paleo-phrenology. Cuccinelli’s complaint lies with NSF rather than Mann.

To the extent that Virginia citizens are concerned about public money being misappropriated, Cuccinelli’s own expenditures on this adventure should be under equal scrutiny. There will be no value for dollar in this enterprise.

It’s hard to think of ways to resuscitate the public image of a guy who, only last week, was threatening to sue Minnesotans For Global Warming. Many people, including me, were relishing the prospect of discoveries back and forth between Mann and Chicken Little. Instead, Cuccinelli has become an even bigger bully.

I intend to write Cuccinelli expressing my disdain for his actions.

I might add that this is not the first time that I’ve volunteered support to Mann in this sort of nonsense. I was copied on one of Keenan’s attempts to instigate a fraud investigation against Mann and immediately made it clear that I did not support or endorse the request, strongly disapproved of it and even offered Mann my support.

To the extent that there are issues with Mann or Jones or any of these guys, they are at most academic misconduct and should be dealt with under those regimes. It is unfortunate that the inquiries at Penn State and UEA have not been even minimally diligent, but complaints on that account rest with the universities or their supervising institutions and the substitution of inappropriate investigations by zealots like Cuccinelli are not an alternative.

Cuccinelli interviewed here http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2010-05-07/politics-hour

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (150)