BP gulf oil well problem

The link only shows a live shot of the wellhead. What am I supposed to "trust like gospel"? That there is a leaking wellhead? I already knew that. What a total waste of time.

Didn't know BP stands for British Petroleum, is this their version of the 'Boston Tea Party'? Long time to hold a grudge...

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You must be young, I remember when BP gas stations were quite prominent in the US. I think in the 80's they merged with Gulf Oil and Amoco to prevent takeover from mideast companies.

Well, Al Gore has some spare time now from what the news says. Maybe he can save us. He does have a lot of awards now AND MONEY. Or Bill Gates, has more than Gore. Or we wait on our new President. I think they gave him some awards too.

Like I said, they got all the equipment down there and made the hole. Why can they not plug the pipe and make a new one? Lots of things we do not know I am sure.

Seems like they didn't have problems dealing with problems in 10,000 feet of water back in 1966. About DSDP

I admit I personally dont know much about oil drilling in general but I do spend 60+ hours a week in the industry on and around drilling rigs with guys who have spent a their life times doing oil work and I ask a lot of questions every opportunity I have as well.

Many of these people have considerable life experience in off shore work and they are the ones who seem to feel that something very suspicious and strange is going on being that this type of situation has happened many many times before and full procedures for dealing with it are not a new thing to the industry. Plus under water service and exploration ROV's and manned submersible tech related to open sea oil industry work is very advanced being its been around and in continual development for over 40 years. **broken link removed**
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I take the word of those persons who work in the industry to know what they are talking about over that of the usual random media fluff and misdirection that seems to always go along with big F'ups such as this.

In 1966, they weren't dealing with a blown out, 100kgal/day undersea oil gusher. A better comparison would be the Ixtoc 1 oil spill, which gushed for nearly a year, and spewed out 140 million gallons of oil.Neither has a well ever been capped at this depth with a damaged riser and defective BOP. The problem is everything at this point is an experiment. Nobody ever knew if such a well could be capped with these pressures, temperatures and flows. Sort of makes me think they should have waited on drilling until they knew exactly how to fix the problem. But profits couldn't wait. There are some good ideas, but if they don't work, they leave no possibility for a next plan. Blowing up the well could very well make things much worse, and leave nothing to try to connect to stop the increased flow. I'm not convinced that crimping the damaged, collapsed riser is a good idea either. I do think everything is being done to fix this, but that doesn't mean I believe BP hasn't been criminally negligent to let this happen in the first place. Neither do I think the government was very wise to allow drilling at depth that nobody knew how to handle problems like this.

I understand they finally managed to cut off the damaged riser and expose a small piece of the pipe for connection of a coupling to siphon off part of the oil. After getting the first, finely granulated abrasive saw stuck, they came back with a coarser saw to finish the job. That means they didn't get as fine of a cut as they wanted, but hopefully good enough to get a decent seal when they try to fit the new "tophat." I'm looking for any good news, although it's already way too late for many of the gulf's residences, human and otherwise.

BrownOut said:

The link only shows a live shot of the wellhead. What am I supposed to "trust like gospel"? That there is a leaking wellhead? I already knew that. What a total waste of time.

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I separated the paragraphs with blank lines, so you could keep things in context. I was commenting on the riser being so brittle, that it would shatter like ceramic if the tried to pinch it closed.

Oh, and the camera view moves occasionally, sometimes there is a better angle to see where the oil is spewing, not just the brown-cloudy water.

Last night, I wrote that the riser had been cut using a rough blade. Evidently the article I was reading was erroneous. This morning, the reports are that the pipe has still not been severed. Now, BP is deploying a giant set of shears to cut through the pipe. The result is a cut that will not allow the "top cap" to be used that would have captured most of the leaking oil, but rather a "top hat" that will capture far less.

I'm tellin' ya... mercury injected at those depths is like an elephant sitting on a straw. Right now it's the far lesser of the two evils.

And do you have detailed technical experiments to prove that it'll work Hitech? You have a theory, do you have any idea how many theories have already popped up of people that are dead convinced that they have the one and only possible solution for stopping this? What state will Mercury even BE in at that depth and temperature?

Could they just stuff a couple of rolls of toilet paper down the hole, works for my 4 year old nephew...

I doubt that anything they do will stop the oil from flowing, until they bring in the new well (to relieve the pressure), which will also save their claim on the site, and rights to the oil.

It's still amazing, that all the decades of argument and debates, backroom deals, there weren't some well planned out course of action, before any drill was ever allowed offshore. The Gulf is a hurricane magnet, and seems that would be risk enough to be prepared for the worst. This figure it out as we go stuff, just doesn't seem right at all. Dealing with the oil slick is another disappointing effort, divert, disperse, then mop up the rest as it comes ashore. Where's the new improved methods? Seems like the tried, and best we've had for decades...

Yup! I don't think there has been any improvment in technology in decades. They continue to deploy those useless booms. Those things have never worked, but is still the best idea we have. And I'm convinced the only purpose of the despersants is to hide the severity of the spill, and aren't effective in cleaning up the disaster in any way.

I still love the whole 'man made disaster' approach to this kind of spill. We didn't make the oil, mother nature did! Sure we let it out, bad us, but if nature made it, I'm sure nature can deal with it. As far as loss of life goes, well that's a human quirk, nature doesn't care about loss of life, just balance of energy levels. One way or another by the end of the lifecycle of the earth that oil will be burnt up somehow, either by us now, or the sun later.

So I'm guessing that if I showed up with a tanker full of oil, raw sewage, etc. and sprayed it all over your yard and in your water supply, then you would be OK with that, because it's just nature and all I’m doing to re-distributing it. After all, you and your family has to die sometime. The oil that's in the marshlands and beaches, killing fish, birds, clams.. and destroying an entire way of life for many families, and making them sick as well had lay harmlessly under the ocean for millions of years before man's uncaring clumsiness released it into the environment.

Even after the oil well is under control, the spilled oil mostly just diverted out to open sea, the toxins will remain in the food chain for many years. Doubt any form of seafood will be safe for consumption anytime soon. Fortunately, I rarely do, but know many who are pretty upset now. No way of really knowing where that fish came from, unless you caught it yourself. Guess when you are thousands of miles away from a disaster, it just doesn't seem so bad. When it's only a couple miles offshore, and nothing going to stop it, looks ugly as hell. Knowing that in a couple of weeks, our shorelines will devastated. I like the peaceful feeling of being outdoors, away from the paved streets and concrete sidewalks. Seldom go to the beach these days, but now, I know there will be little point to it. Just some real sad times.

On the news tonight (West Palm Beach) it shows it will wrap Florida and go up the coast a couple states and make a big mess in the Atlantic. But that is the news. I'd rather try Mercury or TP in that pipe real soon. If BP wants to settle with me directly, real soon, as their stock is down big time.. Plans for lunch tomorrow. Seafood while I can still get it.

The President will be there tomorrow to visit. Hope he has cash, no one else seems to want to visit now for some reason.

Sceadwian said:

And do you have detailed technical experiments to prove that it'll work Hitech? You have a theory, do you have any idea how many theories have already popped up of people that are dead convinced that they have the one and only possible solution for stopping this? What state will Mercury even BE in at that depth and temperature?

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Dammit! I had a nice explanation with facts and numbers entered here and then I go and close the wrong page.... being this one.... the whole thing got wiped out! Sorry, but I'm not going through all that again! Bottom line: Mercury is 13.6 times heavier than water at any depth and remains a liquid metal even at that hydrostatic pressure and temperature 5000ft. down.

And what about the pressure of the oil blowing out of the hole? The mercury's going to be ejected not settle down, this is an active flow not free standing liquid.

I read something of one report claiming 3000-5000psi and another one as high as 15,000psi. If it's the former then mercury could be pumped in place and capped off with whatever "plug" mixture they feel would work... the mercury being the real workhorse to hold back pressure until the plug can take hold. If it's the latter (15,000psi) then I don't know what would work other than bagging up all the lies, tricks, and foolery from liberals. That should weigh in at a hefty few thousand tons or more!

It sounds like some containment has been made. **broken link removed**
It seems as BP is still trying to make a fix a keep the oil to.

It is easy to be an "arm chair expert", but not so easy when you're in the hot seat trying to solve the problem.

I really don't believe that BP is not doing its best to plug the leak.

Some years ago, one of the oil companies wanted to drill on the Great Barrier Reef. Fortunately, our government had the wisdom & foresight to disallow it.

An oil spill on the GBR would be similar in its devastation to the current Gulf situation given the diversity of life that depend on the reef for food & shelter.