Dr Julia Cherry is a board of member of the directors for Friends of Hurricane Creek and a wetlands specialist.
I am proud to say she is one of my bosses.
Julia Cherry, a wetlands specialist and assistant professor at UAs New College, discusses the impact of the BP oil spill in this weeks Town Hall.
Great video - especially on the 'planned delay of a final solution' to the spill. It raises the question of why BP planned taking 2-3 months to drill a relief well to 5000 foot depth - when it could have intersected and plugged the leaking well at a 'safe' 1000 foot level in less than a month. Nobody is questioning BP's approach!
ReplyDeleteA recent Scientific American writer says...."When drilling a relief well, you want to get as deep as possible so that you can seal the well close to the [oil] reservoir," says Roger Anderson, an oil geophysicist and a professor at Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. As an oil well is drilled casings are cemented in place at different depths to reinforce the borehole. If a well is sealed too high, any leaks between well casings beneath the seal could still leak oil out into the surrounding rock and up to the seafloor."
So the deeper you drill the relief well the smaller the chance of any remaining leakage. But drilling to 5X the depth can only indicate that BP is trying for a longer term (and extremely lucrative) salvage of the oil field - at the expense of the environment!
And where is Obama? Why isn't he doing updates everyday keeping the world informed? Its the end of all marine life in the gulf. It's heartbreaking.
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