The continuing flood of oil from the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico has produced a continuing flood of news and opinion 
coverage.
The views of Iraj Ershaghi, who is the holder of the Omar B. Milligan Chair in Petroleum Engineering and director of the Viterbi School's petroleum engineering program, have received wide reporting, and Ershaghi himself has written on the topic.
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July 21 Because deep-water drilling is still a small fraction of overall drilling, the market for better equipment is small, says Iraj Ershaghi, .."Equipment-wise, we are OK now, [But] it's getting tougher and tougher and tougher [to extract subsea oil]. We need better technology." |
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July 20 "Professor Iraj Ershaghi, Director of Petroleum Engineering at the Viterbi School Of Engineering at USC tells Tilden that the leak could have been plugged in the same fashion that was successful over the weekend three months ago." |
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July 20 "A Look at the Oil Drilling Process" |
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July 17 Ershaghi discusses 'collaboration room' allowing experts to cooperate on crisis response in situations like blowout using shared data streams on Science in Action June 9: BBC readers submitted 18 ideas for oil spill containtment, ranging from nuclear devices to polystyrene beads, which "were assessed by Iraj Ershaghi..." May 26 "It is like two forces fighting with each other. If the force downwards exceeds the force upwards, you are going to succeed, |
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July 14: Extended interview on KTLA about drilling dangers. |
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July 15, July 15: Two stories on the risks of capping the spill, one in the news pages, one in a blog. July 13 " ..could potentially create a wide, unmanageable crater of gushing oil, said Ershaghi. ..'That would be disastrous,' Ershaghi said. "There's a lot of risk involved here.'" May 30 "Ershaghi .. warned that continuing to inject mud into the well at extreme pressure could have broken pipes..." Regarding previous see also: Columbia Journalism Review story May 25 "Ershaghi estimated that the upward pressure was likely to be 9,000 pounds per square inch..." |
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July 7: Aging cement in the thousands of abandoned wells "could become a weak point." |
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June 23 Patt Morrison Show. 'Fixing & Learning from the BP disaster:' Sen. Bernie Sanders, Iraj Ershaghi, Rich Steiner, U. of Alaska June 1 Airtalk: Guests: ....Iraj Ershaghi, Director of the Petroleum Engineering program at USC |
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June 19: "Obama spill panel big on policy, not engineering." |
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June 11: Ershaghi gives viewers a visual lesson in "Oil Drilling 101" |
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June 1 QUEST MEANS BUSINESS "Professor Iraj Ershaghi, the director of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California joins me..." |
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May 25 OP-ED "....Specific facts about technology, geology and economics should be kept in the equation - including the possibility that banning offshore drilling may actually lead to more oil spills." |
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May 3 - Ershaghi interviewed at length on wisdom of continuing ban on offshore drilling in California, noting that the waters are much shallower, the oil under lower pressure, and that less drilling would mean more tanker traffic, with potential for spill. |
