The wait…

 

Birds at the Breton Island sanctuary, 30 April.   Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

I landed on this at the Telegraph.  August 2009

BP to drill deeper in search of oil

BP plans to take the search for oil to even greater depths below the earth’s surface. The Gulf of Mexico, where BP has already made a huge discovery more than 5 miles below the seabed, is one of the areas where the group is planning new tests for oil technology in the hope of unlocking untapped resources in the lower tertiary geological formation.

By Roland Gribben
Published: 7:35PM BST 17 Aug 2009

Neil Shaw, BP’s team leader in the Gulf region, said:

“We think it holds really great potential but it’s going to be very difficult.” BP has been investing heavily in the Gulf region, buying new exploration territory at auctions in an area accounting for more than half of its 652,000 barrels a day US production.

BP has already made one significant find in the lower tertiary zone. The Kaskida field in 5,860 feet of water and more than 26,000 feet below the seabed is estimated to hold more than 3bn barrels.

With more appraisal drilling needed and fracturing of rock formations to increase flow rates not expected to get under way until next year it will be several years and several billion pounds of investment before the first oil flows.

Mr Shaw said the risk is not small, but succeeding required expecting unforeseen problems and then working to overcome them. “One way I think about this is, if I look back at when we discovered Thunder Horse in 1999, we did not have the technology to develop Thunder Horse, and here we are 10 years later, it’s onstream. It’s performing very well,” he said.

Full text.

**********

Reading about how many turtles have washed up on one extended stretch of beach around Pass Christian MS… 31 as of yesterday… it will be a herculean effort, eventually, just to collect the dead.

[W]ith the help of a neighbour, she carried the turtle up the beach as she had been instructed to do, and left it by a wooden post where it was still lying a few hours later, by now starting to smell in the muggy Mississippi heat. “I’ve lived here 20 years and I’ve never seen a dead turtle on this beach before,” Carroll said.

All along this strip, and the 26 miles of beaches to which it connects, people have been reporting similar mysterious sightings over the past couple of days. This morning eight sea turtles were found dead in Pass Christian, in addition to nine yesterday, bringing the total number of dead turtle sightings in the wider area to at least 31.

Tests on the animals were being carried out at the Institute of Sea Mammal Studies in Gulfport, 10 minutes’ drive along the sea from Pass Christian. The institute specialises in the study and treatment of stranded dolphins, sea turtles and other marine life and has a dedicated laboratory where 23 turtles are being kept in plastic bags in an animal morgue. Among them are Loggerheads, Leatherheads and Kemp’s Ridley – the most critically endangered species of sea turtle in the Gulf.  snip