jksnijders

Awesome. Its that Fu Manchu?

They were pretty sticky on whether or not we had been near a farm in the last while when I went, for the possibility of livestock disease transmission. New Zealand also. Other than that they weren't bad. Worst case you just get to toss your deer hair or whatever else they don't approve of.

Awesome..

Phenological Fly is awesome.

Front wheel drive, could be CV joints.

There's one by Jim Schollmeyer that's really good, Hatch Guide for Western Streams. And it's very portable.

Click here if the movie does not play.

Leaves one to wonder just how many cans of Pilsner will hit the ground.

I saw that, have no idea how anyone thinks that will do anything. How exactly do you place them in the well with thousands of pounds pressure coming at you, let alone hope they will actually seal anything off? A roomful of golfballs or tires is both porous and permeable, no matter how much of each you cram into it.

Yup.

It's a fairly unprecedented set of circumstances. For the number of wells in that area the statistics are pretty low as far as wrecks go from what I've read. And depth is most certainly an issue, 1500 meters into pitch black ocean, currents, (at surface and on the floor) hydrostatic pressure, and a well that is blowing out are all huge factors. I've worked at depth, under pressure, and on blown out wells (though nothing that serious, thankfully, just a 2 am seeding time wellhead runover by the Hutterites out by Nanton) but never offshore, so I can only imagine what that throws into the mix. I was near another one once a few miles from my parents house, and it's not as though they just do their thing and thats the end of it. As I watched from a distance the pressure at surface fluctuated very noticeably, visible in the fireball over the wellhead. Same with this one, I'm sure, the worst part being god knows what its doing on the ocean floor. Depending on where the gas/oil are escaping, there are really good chances that by now most of the BOP's are washed out (fluid, sand, gas all under pressure basically sandblasting the Blowout Preventer til there's nothing left..) Just the fact that it's going as hard as it is gives you some idea of the zonal pressure behind the well, (being that the seawater hydrostatic pressure is obviously not slowing it down). Obviously the initial accident, the BOP failure, and the fact that there are almost definitely rig parts scattered all around the wellhead makes it one hell of a thing to deal with. As well as damaged parts and the obviously huge pressures escaping them that make patching them up difficult to say the least. I've worked off bigger drilling rigs that were using shear rams in their BOP's, essentially a last ditch effort if everything goes south, that basically cut off whatever may be in them, be it casing, drillstem, etc. With pressure tested surface casing in place at least with everything shut in you have a chance after the fact. Who knows what led to the failure though. When I first heard about it I thought to myself how bad the outcome could be, and that was going on the little info initially available. The worst part about things like this is the fact that they never truly know what they may encounter while drilling until they encounter it. Throw in human error when things go really south and there are lives on the line, and thats how quickly things can go really far south. And not like a Valdez type incident where you have a known quantity in the water and can deal with it (though that makes it no better obviously..) its coming straight from the tap, so to speak. It's an absolute disaster, for sure, but as rickr said the economics of the business drive the exploration into areas like that where everything is high risk, high reward. I am not envious of anyone who has to be on the hot seat trying to fix the mess, nor of anyone who has to deal with the outcome, I have no doubt it'll not be a quick fix, unfortunately.

Didn't check MLS, just the numbers from your previous post. (Unless that was a running total..?) Good points.

I should have clarified.. Sorry. 15 properties under 350 k, (a considerable chunk of change for almost anybody, even with a several decades long mortgage) 116 above, by my count. So the higher priced pads quite obviously outnumber the the rest. As you said earlier you felt that values in communities like yours will increase in value along with a rise in gas prices, due to the fact that there are recreational opportunities associated with the lakes. Fair enough. Personally I'd rather not carry the mortgage debt, just for the benefit of a manmade lake. But, I agree, as the average price is where it is why not? As for real estate in general in Calgary, haven't been paying much attention these days, and I hadn't realized that the average single family home was now 459 k. But as I said, given that the average family income is 90 k (and fairly flatlined it seems) I fail to see how any of the aforementioned properties, (and I should have specified all) are truly "affordable" to the average family, even though they are below average on the whole of the city. So I guess the root of what I have been getting at is I don't have alot of faith in the prices of real estate seeing a rise in correspondence to fuel prices, mainly because they seem so high already with the major factors driving their value being cheap mortgages and the obvious sentiment people have towards houses. I guess you could say I'm not very optimistic towards residential real estate at the moment. Off topic to the thread, I know, and a bit of a runaround, but that is what I was getting at.

Compared to....?

I apologize for my ignorance.. I wasn't aware the bubble was that large already.

Just look at around July last year, oil was worth almost $ 140 a barrel. Things like that have a huge effect on the economy.

Whoops...

A quick look at real estate in the "Sundance" neck of the woods showed a pile of listings over 500 k... Thats a pretty heavy debt load for for anyone that falls within the apparently median family income for Calgary of about 90 k, especially with the rising interest rates these days. Maybe I'm crazy but I doubt alot of people (at least those with any instinct of financial self-preservation, which these days are a dying breed it seems to me.) would see the benefit of carrying that mortgage for the privilege of living next to a man-made lake. With the associated energy costs driving the exodus to these "lake" communities, as well as the obvious economic upheaval we've seen from energy price spikes in the past, such as now, with unemployment obviously feeling the effects, real estate like that is in for a bit of a correction I'd guess. Personally I'd prefer to pay the gas bill at my discretion rather than be chained to the mortgage...

A quick look at real estate in the "Sundance" neck of the woods showed a pile of listings over 500 k... Thats a pretty heavy debt load for for anyone that falls within the apparently median family income for Calgary of about 90 k, especially with the rising interest rates these days. Maybe I'm crazy but I doubt alot of people (at least those with any instinct of financial self-preservation, which these days are a dying breed it seems to me.) would see the benefit of carrying that mortgage for the privilege of living next to a man-made lake. With the associated energy costs driving the exodus to these "lake" communities, as well as the obvious economic upheaval we've seen from energy price spikes in the past, such as now, with unemployment obviously feeling the effects, real estate like that is in for a bit of a correction I'd guess. Personally I'd prefer to pay the gas bill at my discretion rather than be chained to the mortgage...

I saw a stat once detailing the number of cars hitting the road every week in China, (this was a couple years ago when things were a little better economically, mind you) but the figure was astonishing. Something else that really caught my eye recently was in a box of National Geographic magazines I got from a relative, all quite old, the one of which was from around the time of the oil price shock of the 70's. The article, aside from the dated pictures, could have appeared when oil spiked recently. All the same talk of alternate energy sources, etc. etc. I agree totally that we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels eventually, but even then nothing drastically changed. Oil prices dropped, the panic was over, and everything went back to business as usual. As far as "Peak Oil", by Hubbert's definition, its quite obvious (from what we get told) that production is declining, but technology keeps up at a pretty rapid pace. Wells that no one would really try to drill say 10 years ago are commonplace now. Horizontal multi stage wells are the big thing nowadays, gas production in the US has increased a pile because of it. Also, I've read that current oil prices are out of line with economic fundamentals, considering you can hardly get a tanker to just hold the stuff at sea. There is alot of it just sitting around at the moment, yet the price is holding around $80/barrel, perhaps largely driven by speculation? One thing to remember is that there are alot of largely unexplored regions on this planet, both on land and underwater, in terms of oil and gas. I would assume that a best guess in terms of "proven" reserves (a term that always makes me laugh) is drawn from seismic data, yet there are no shortage of places that haven't even been looked at yet.

From experience, just shoot from within the house. A couch cushion, a stable surface, an open window about 5 feet away, and a clear line of fire equals very little muzzle blast heard outside the house.

Hard to say.. Could have gotten a hell of alot worse after that one. Looked like it unloaded alot of fluid. Done a good number of jobs off drilling rigs, familiar with hydrostatics in both open and cased hole. Don't miss cementing one bit actually.. Was on a well (cased) that the crew had 7 MPA on the plug I just set for a pressure test, hold for 15, when the driller opened the blind rams without the well being bled off. Shot a 5 1/2 wide (casing size) geyser of fluid over the crown of the service rig. Amazing what pressure will do.. even a couple thousand KPA will blow the lubricator right off a wellhead if opened up to without proper equalization.

Things can go south in a big hurry, as this vid shows.

They certainly planned to have a blowout, sink a 600 million dollar platform to the bottom (overtop of their subsea controls I'm sure) kill 11, seriously injure many more, and now have the wild well to control, (where its really easy to see what's going on with it..) as well as the cleanup. Might I add the 500 thousand a day to drill the well to that point, (which they may actually end up ruining with the kill operation..) and who knows what other costs to yet be determined. But unless you ride a bike everywhere and burn wood to heat your house you're part of the problem, not the solution. Tragic environmentally for sure, as is the crew loss, but if you think wells like that are drilled in a haphazard fashion, put down the Elmer's...

Thats awesome.. Good to hear your rods weren't lifted too rickr.