Greetings!

Its been a while since we last posted a story here, but a few recent events spurred this newsletter into existence.

BP finally capped the blowout in the Gulf. I would guess the only people more surprised than me that they managed to get a seal on the wellhead, are the engineers who were involved in it. Almost immediately, the media frenzy ceased. It even resulted in the CBC radio trotting out what can only be described as shocking journalism. Not long after the blow out was stopped the US Government and BP issued a statement that said, (Im paraphrasing here, but you get the jist), "don't worry.....75% of the oil spill has evaporated or disappeared...disaster is over." and CBC repeated this story without even think how ridiculous that press release was. Less than a day or so later, the real stories started to appear contradicting this view, but no sign of any CBC retract story.

The well flowed unrestrained for nearly 3 months. Estimates of the flow rate varied from 1,000 barrels per day (BPs estimate) to 120,000 barrels per day from various scientists studying video footage of the flow from the end of the well. BPs estimate was quickly shown to be utterly wrong when they attempted to catch the oil and found over 5000 barrels per day were being caught on the surface tanker. In the end, even BP admitted the flow could be 100,000 barrels per day. The flow of 100,000 barrels per day for the 3 months the well flowed, comes to approximately 9,000,000 barrels of oil spilt. There are 42 gallons in every barrel so that equals 378,000,000 gallons of oil spilt.

This is between 12 and 34 times the amount of oil that the Exon Valdez split in Alaska,depending on whole figures for flow rate you believe.

Reports from ships in the area were finding huge plumes of oil, 35 kilometres long, floating thousands of feet below the sea level creating dead zones where little or no oxygen or marine life existed.

The chemicals being sprayed to "clean" up the mess were even more toxic that the oil. Clean up workers were being admitted to hospitals with severe illnesses including internal bleeding. Obviously comparisons were made with the Exxon Valdez spill, where it was reported that almost all the volunteers who helped clean up the Exxon spill were dead at an average age of 51, the link being made between the workers being exposed to the crude and clean up chemicals.

Its All About Risk Management

The point of this, is that in life everything is a risk. In my previous life as a Engineer working for oil and gas companies, I spent a huge amount of time looking at the risk of various things related to drilling the wells. These ranged from minimizing people slipping and falling on the rigs and hurting themselves to the other end of the scale, the risk of "loss of containment" i.e. a blow out on the rig. It's always a risk, on every well, its possible and probable if you don't be careful. Most of every day was spent with well control issues, after all when we were sitting on rigs drilling High Pressure, High Temperature wells it was in our own best interest to make sure you know what was going on.

That is not to say everyone is the same. In the early days, as I progressed through my career, I worked as a Junior Engineer to some truly idiotic people, old school oil field dinosaurs who seem to have a death wish. I saw on many occasions some Senior Drilling Supervisor ordering people about to do things that were clearly dangerous. It was plain to see how someone with a big bullying ego can make people do things they would not do if left to their own common sense.

This obviously happened on the Deepwater Horizon Rig just before the rig blew up. In what has to be one of the best headlines of the year read this story! "Are you f**king happy? Are you f**king happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen."

We had a saying on the rig that "...bravery is directly proportional to the distance from the wellhead....".

The risk of blow out is always written into the drilling plans. It is taken very seriously, however like everything else in life, it can go wrong. Planes crash, boats sink, nuclear power stations blow up, and blowouts do occur. Blow outs happen far more frequently than you would imagine. Worst Offshore Blowouts - Oil Rig Disasters - Offshore Drilling Accidents

And they will happen again. If this blow out had occurred offshore in some remote part of the world, it would have been a 2 or 3 day news story, but as it was off the US Gulf coast, the media were all over it for months. As the vast majority of this oil is still floating in the Gulf, the end of this story is a long way off.

As part of the general public we watch the events in the Gulf and blame BP, blame the Government, blame the Regulators. How about blaming ourselves. We are all responsible for the Gulf spill. We all use the oil.

Coming back to the initial part of this story, the recent news that sparked this letter - the breaking of the dam holding all the toxic waste at the Aluminium plant in Hungary. The areas around this factory are now devastated. The rivers more or less dead and farmland ruined for decades. Do you think that no one at those plants thought the dams could break one day. Of course they did, its just an acceptable part of "doing business". Just like the risk of a blow out, it's always a part of "doing business" but we go ahead anyway.

The size of this spill in Hungary has been estimated at 184 million gallons of toxic sludge, all suddenly released when the banks of the tailing pond broke.

Back Home To Canada - Risk Management?

Lets think, where in Canada do we have a similar situation? The Tar sands. These Alberta tailings ponds, will one day break. Its just a matter of time.
The issue of the carbon emmissions from the oil sands seem to miss the point. As has been talked about so far in this article, one day the banks of these tailing ponds WILL break and pretty much everything for hundreds of miles will be dead. It is just a matter of time, it could be tomorrow or in 20 years. You cant outrun the statistics, one day the the tailings ponds will break. Then the Government will launch an investigation and then say "we need to tighten up the regulations". It will be too late.

The Tar Sands Leak Almost The Same Amount Of Oil Every Day As The Gulf Oil Spill.

The size of the tailings ponds in the Alberta Tar sands boggles the mind, here are some facts.
Size: They occupy 130 square kilometres, forecast to increase to 310 square kilometres by 2040. As of 2008 they occupied TWICE the volume of Alberta Sylvan Lake or more area than the city of Vancouver.
Volume: AFTER processing, the ponds grow by 80 Olympic sized swimming pools EVERY DAY. 200 million litres every day.
Leak Rate: The ponds are NOT sealed. They leak an estimated 11 million litres EVERY day. These figures are from the Pembina Institute, one of the most respected not-for-profit in Canada.

Compare this to the Gulf Oil Spill? Based on the figures at the start of this article, if the Gulf spill was leaking at 100,000 barrels per day (about 16 million litres per day), this mean almost as much toxic waste leaks into the ground EVERY day as the BP Gulf blow out was leaking every day.

Think about that for a moment. We have our own Gulf Oil Spill going on every day here in Alberta, and it continues unabated and with no sign of stopping. There is stoney silence from the Government who generally support the oil sands, the media tread very carefully playing down the "dirty oil". Read the Pembina Institute article "...the Spin and the Plain Facts and the Full Story..." This is a nice short presentation of the realities of Oil Sand Production. Government officials play down or flatly deny there is anything leaking from the Tar Sands.

Life after the Oil Crash

Official forecasts for population growth and energy needs mean that we would need to find an oil field the size of Saudi Arabia every 3 or 4 years for then next 15 or 20 years. There is ZERO chance this will happen. Do yourself a favour and read this extract from a book by Jeremy Leggett. He was a Geologist for the major Oil Companies before working for Greenpeace as the Chief Scientist for 11 years before founding a solar company in the UK called The Solar Century.

The two biggest fields found in the World in the past 30 years or so were in Brazil a couple of years ago. Tupi and Carioca, estimated to hold 8 Billion and 30 Billion barrels of oil respectively. I wrote about these back in early 2009.

To put this into perspective, the largest field in the World is on Saudi Arabia, called Ghawar Field, has an estimate 71 Billion barrels remaining! it has been producing oil since 1948 .... and we think we will find another Ghawar field every 3 or 4 year!

Did you know?
1. The biggest oilfields in the World were discovered more than half a century ago, either side of the Second World War.
2. The peak of oil discovery was as long ago as 1965.
3. There were a few more big discovery years in the 1970s, but there have been virtually none since then. The only recent ones were in Brazil a year or so ago.
4. The last year in which the World discovered more oil than we consumed was nearly 30 years ago.
5. We use about 6 barrels of oil for every one we find.

The Future.

In the end our only solution is renewable energy. Our only choice is whether we make the change out of our own choosing or we are forced into it by skyrocketing fuel prices or no fuel at all.


Sincerely,

latitude51 solar

Solar Thermal in the News

Contact us for a Free Commercial Solar Simulation Design Services 1 800 759 8990

Watch Solar Water Heating Video

Watch this great video on solar water heating systems.

PopularItems

Live Monitoring

See a solar hot water system in Calgary and Vancouver here.

Photo Gallery

Image of some Residential and Commercial Solar Water Heating projects.

Online Store

Buy solar systems for DIY install, prices and technical details can be found here.

Solar Heating Design Layouts

See some of our most popular Pre-Engineer Solar Water Heating Packages available for domestic hot water, space heating and pools.

Solar Water Heating Articles

Need more info? Let us help!

Fill and select all the * marked fields to submit. Our team will respond as soon as possible!

SolarWater Heating Projects

About Us

Latitude51 Solar Heating System are distributed across Canada ,USA, Mexico and Caribbean. We are a North American Distributor for solar water heating equipment. By eliminating the traditional wholesale distributors, we sell direct to contractors and home owners across North America so they can buy our solar at affordable prices. We are forever expanding our network of distribution locations around Canada and USA. If you would like to join our team then call us at 1 (800) 317-9054

Installer Locations

  •  Vancouver
  •  Winnipeg
  •  Saskatchewan
  •  Edmonton
  •  Calgary
  •  Okanagan
  •  Los Angels
  •  New York
  •  Minnesota
  •  Chicago
  •  Seattle

Navigate

Contact Details

Address: 835 Kapelus Dr. West St Paul, MB R4A 5A4, Canada
Phone 1 800 317 9054
Contact Us
Our Location Map

facebook2