Hey, so how many people, "experts" that is, were watching the

[Duer 157099]

Gusher Cam last night after midnight and were commenting on how the gush was so obviously mud because of _______ (insert explanation here)?

Do they have mud on their faces now?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Uh, it wasn't mud?

[Duer 157099]

3. BP said they ceased pumping mud at midnight

so whatever was gushing out of those pipes was not mud, contrary to what many experts were saying.

"It's obviously mud because of the color" and stuff like that.

Doh!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Ceasing pumping mud from the ship...

a mile up on the surface, down the pipe, into the BP preventer.

You'll notice it took a number of hours from the time they started pumping yesterday, until mud started blowing out the BOP. And they've already restarted pumping mud some time ago.

It's not like oil started shooting out the moment they stopped pumping either.

[boston bean]

7. I thought it looked lighter because it there was more light focused on it. nt

[rockymountaindem]

8. That could have been mud coming out later that they had pumped in before

In addition, if they were pumping in mud until midnight, I will assume on central time, that would be 1:00 AM on the east coast. People were speculating about the color of the material, etc. well before that while the process was still ongoing.

More importantly, this whole disaster has obviously become nothing but a means for various groups of people to score rhetorical points on one another, whether it is from the camp who wants to exonerate the Obama administration from this or those who seem to want to implicate it for the entire problem from its beginning. I thought I was a fairly cynical person before, but at least I thought that a natural disaster such as this, with such clear environmental and human implications, would have quieted the political gutter sniping and backbiting for a while. I guess I was wrong.

On top of that are the obvious misanthropes who are sardonically laughing this whole episode off as a means of pointing out how the "human virus" as one person here called it is just ironically sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Those people are pretty depressing to see in action.

[tekisui]

16. Only if it had always been mud.

The first images from the BOP leak look no different from what we are told is now mud.

[Solly Mack]

2. I didn't watch. I didn't comment...but I used to make mud pies as a child.

[tridim]

4. It was mud and is still mud that we're seeing on the video.

Fail.

[Duer 157099]

5. Elaborate? n/t

[metapunditedgy]

9. The unofficial numbers I saw said that almost all the mud pumped in

was coming right back out. The well itself would (if filled) hold only a small amount of mud. So how could much mud be coming out for hours after the pumping?

(Unless there was a lot in the pumping hose or something.)

[Statistical]

13. the well would only hold a small amount of mud? Really? It isn't a sippy straw.

well is essentially a cylinder.
1 foot radius and 5 miles (~25,000 ft) height.

V=(Pi)r^2h
V=(3.14)(1)(25,000)
V= approx >75,000 cubic feet of mud.

1 cubic foot approx 7 gallons.
thus the well can hold approximately half a million gallons of fluid.

[metapunditedgy]

17. Relatively small amount of mud, compared to what was pumped and flow rates.

Search for "update on mud volumes" here:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6515#comments_top

[Statistical]

10. It was mud.

Just because BP stopped pumping in new mud into the well at midnight doesn't mean the mud already in the well didn't magically all leak out in one second.

[thewiseguy]

12. Think about it this way

They started pumping oil at around noon and stopped at midnight. That is 12 hours.

During that time a lot of mud did come out of the BOP.

Then they stopped pumping mud for 16 hours. As of noon today there was stuff gushing out of the well and it did not look all that different from what I was seeing last night.

You think the BOP was gushing mud for 16 straight hours?

[Statistical]

15. Depends on how much mud they forced into the well.

See above the well shaft can hold approximately half million gallons of fluid.

[jp11]

11. The idea was to pump mud in the Blowout preventer valve that would then go down the actual drill

hole in the sea floor. I don't recall the exact depth from the sea floor to the oil field but the mud is supposed to go down that hole to weigh down the oil gushing out and slow/stop it since crap kept coming out it didn't stop but I'm pretty sure had to be mixing with what was pushed down or if BP lowered the rate they pumped it then it just mixed with oil/gas.

[Junkdrawer]

14. First rule of the "Expert scold" gambit: Never ever EVER admit you were wrong....

Never.