One key to Mix finding a solution to stop the oil flow was to calculate how much oil was gushing into the Gulf.
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British oil company BP, one of the firms operating the rig, has not been able to activate a device known as a blow-out preventer, designed to stop oil flow in an emergency.
The oil sector could also get hit hard, with Iran potentially mining the Persian Gulf and attempting to close the Straits of Hormuz, putting a stranglehold on oil flow, Shepperd says.
Now, even though refined plans show an alternate route, environmentalists worry that if the expected 500, 000 to 700, 000 barrels of crude oil flow through the pipeline each day, leaks could contaminate the water and soil.
BP, which had been leasing the rig from Transocean, says the safety device that was supposed to cut oil flow on the ocean floor in the event of a well blowout did not perform its function.
The best way to minimize leaks is to replace this aging network with modern pipelines such as the one planned for the Keystone XL, which use technology that instantly recognizes leaks and immediately shuts down oil flow.
Transocean ( RIG - news - people ), says the safety device that was supposed to cut oil flow on the ocean floor in the event of a well blowout did not perform its function.
"The evident destruction of the collection manifold is a big deal in that this by itself is likely to result in immediate cessation of oil flow from the area, " said Jonathan Hutson, a spokesman for the project, which is led by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
"It is telling that the Department of Justice's charges against Kurt Mix surround efforts to cover up the fact that BP's public estimates of the oil flow rate were far lower than the actual flow rate, " the group said in a statement on the arrest.
Though a program displays panels showing all the critical processes of a real rig (fire and gas detectors, valve status, oil flow from the sea bed and so on), and then responds to the actions of the trainee by altering these displays appropriately, a human operator can intervene at any time if things seem to be going too smoothly.
But under a production-sharing agreement, the Kazakh government still stands to make a lot of money if the oil does flow: it will take an 80% share of any profits.
And that, despite claims that this would somehow -- this pipeline would somehow solve the pain that families are feeling at the pump today, the company itself has said it would take years before a single drop of oil would flow through that pipeline.
Rather, as a consequence of injecting water and sand into the shale formation to crack the rocks so gas and oil will flow, massive amounts of waste water comes back to the surface with significant amounts of contaminants as a result of leaching out salt, heavy metals and trace amounts of radioactive materials from the rock formation itself.
But if oil starts to flow, Argentina might seek regional support for an economic blockade.
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Most of those chemicals are designed to stay underground, where they react with the rock and help the oil and gas flow.
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Wells in shale plays have to undergo a process known as fracturing to boost the porosity of the rock and to make oil and gas flow to the well head.
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Another early beneficiary might be Carbo Ceramics, which sells ceramic pellets the size of grains of sand that are pumped into the rock surrounding the wells to prop open the tiny cracks through which oil and gas flow.
There are some systems that actually will take a circle and drop it just below the surface of the water and have the oil kind of flow into it, almost like a drain, recover it and pump it out.
Oil-industry analysts believe that cutting the flow of Saudi oil to the U.S. would be painful--but far from fatal--to the U.S. economy.
We're talking about the loss here, by the way, of 400, 000 barrels of oil every day while the flow is shut down in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oil field.
America is a big user of oil, compared with fuel-efficient Europe, so more dollars than euros flow into the oil-exporters' coffers when oil becomes dear.
Rebels no longer shut down the country's electricity grid or disrupt the flow of oil.
The issue here is disruption, is there a major disruption in the flow of oil.
Iran stands to lose enormously if oil is allowed to flow freely from the Caspian.
Although oil first started to flow in the 19th century, the republic produces little of it now.
Gamma-ray emitters bounce atomic particles off rock formations to see the size, density and flow of oil reservoirs.
The former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan is celebrating the first flow of oil from the Caspian Sea for decades.
Would Iran cut off the flow of oil out of the Middle East?
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And it endangered the flow of oil to Europe through the Suez Canal.
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