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BP's Final "Top Kill" Procedure For Gulf Oil Spill
eldavojohn writes "So far every attempted fix has resulted in failure to contain the Gulf of Mexico oil spill with the exception of the riser insertion method that appears to be little more than a mile-long tube sucking up oil. After attempting many options to allow the continued collection of crude oil, BP is finally considering a 'top kill' option that will kill the well. A vessel at the surface will use 30,000 horsepower pumps to slam kill mud and clay into the well's bent riser, allowing them to cap the well off with two relief wells (which won't be ready for several months). If that fails, the vessel will move on to a 'junk shot' that involves spewing larger debris like shredded rubber and golf balls into the lines to gum up the flow and stop it. Government officials acknowledge that while this may provide a solution, it may also worsen the situation if the resulting pressure causes the lines to blow or fail at other points. While this is likely one of the worst environmental disasters to hit the gulf, BP's debacle has caused Shell to pre-build cofferdams into seven wells that it is currently drilling in the gulf. These would drop into place in the event of such a catastrophic failure of a riser under the well."
Why didn't they just do this in the first place? Why muck about with wholly unproven methods? They should have sealed this thing up weeks ago. They greed and attempts to keep the well usable are a fucking disgrace.
Living With a Nerd
The question is, though, will the government be able to do any better? I say let a disinterested (disinterested in the collection of the oil, that is) tackle the problem. Get BP out of the equation completely (aside from paying for the 3rd-parties services).
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
They do, it's called an uncontained oil leak.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Accept car accidents don't kill of entire ecosystems.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
1) Why are they poring dispersants on the oil spill instead of coagulants?
2) Good on Shell for being proactive, to bad it took a major disaster to get a more comprehensive disaster plan.
The mud or junk will not be inserted through the riser pipe.
There are access pipes on the BOP itself for this kind of stuff.
The mud or junk will therefore be inserted BEFORE the riser pipe.
Blocking the riser would be useless given it's bent, cracked at the BOP and could potentially rip off due to the blockage.
Privatized profits. Socialize losses!
BP wont ever end up paying much of the real cost involved in this. Any fines they do face will be a tiny percent of their yearly profit.
And they will go on to do this again in the future.. Saving a buck or two on safety to make some money. Just like they did 20 years ago for their last major disaster.
Yeah know, we really need the oil.. But i'd say we need someplace to live way way more.
Someday we're really going to have to hold corporations accountable in a REAL way for the lives and things they destroy.
Major oil spill cuz you skiped on some safety that we have invented already? Shoot the CEO in the head.
Sooner or later companys will stop doing things that endanger the environment or peoples lives... Or we'll run out of CEO's. either way... it would be an improvement.
They're holding themselves to the same standard the average person would.
Well that's not the standard of care they're supposed to follow.
if we get into a car accident, we're quick to shrug it off as just that: an accident. Nobody's fault. We pick up the pieces and move on.
I would just like to say that, as a former mechanic, I've been blamed for accidents caused by a completely unrelated item I worked on.
"You worked on my car, and I got in an accident three days later! It's your fault!"
"Sir, I replaced your air filter and both O2 sensors."
"And now my car didn't stop in time!"
"Sir, what happend exactly"
"I was texting my wife, and next thing I knew I had run into someone! I tried to stop but I couldn't!"
(What I wanted to say): "Sir, life isn't like Mechwarrior, you can't stop instantly."
(What I actually said): "Sir, why were you texting and driving?"
Living With a Nerd
Do you know WHY governmental regulation has been so bad in the last dozen or so years? It's because presidential administrations and Congress have NOT ALLOWED it to be good. They have purposefully put people in those political jobs knowing that they weren't going to regulate on purpose. The Bush administration did this more than anyone else. The Clinton administration was 2nd only to Bush, and Bush, Sr. was a close 3rd.
Do you think government can't get the experts it needs to professionally oversee these companies? Are you kidding? They could in a second. It's that the politicos don't want to put competent people without conflicts of interest in these positions. And we're paying the price for it now and he gulf cost will be paying the price for the next century or so....
You don't need a manned mini sub to handle satchel charges - the ROVs could do it just fine. While I realize the male Geek driven drive to Just Blow Things Up is quite strong, it doesn't always work that way. Engineering takes time and reality is quite often quirky, bitchy and hard.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It sure isn't fair to the fishermen who may very well be watching their livelihoods disappear. The real disaster here might not even be the beaches, but the salt marshes.
BP should be made to pay and pay and pay and pay and pay and pay until every last solitary nickel of economic and physical damage is fixed, even if it takes fifty years and a trillion dollars. That's the risk side of the equation, my friend.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Accidents are rarely accidents, someone fucked up. I sure blame the person who backed into my last car. Guess what she did not even come close to risking death zones in the gulf. Her insurance paid the for everything and got me a rental while my car was fixed. That is all we ask here, they fix their mess. If that means they go out of business collecting every last drop of that oil, too fucking bad for them.
These assholes cut corners, you can read all about on the news sites. The simple fact is they did this to make a quick buck and now thousands of folks are screwed, fishermen with no fish to sell, property owners with ocean front property ruined, the list goes on and on.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
Lameness Filter is stupid. I have to add a bunch of regular characters to add "code characters" to a technical page? LAME.
The top kill is what happens when the oil gets to the surface. These desperate (and failing) attempts to contain the spill should have inspired the government to take control of the situation earlier. It's clear that BP doesn't know what the hell they're doing.
I hope everyone who chanted "drill baby drill!" during the last election cycle is willing to go down to the gulf coast and help with the cleanup. What a mess!
Facts have a liberal bias.
While you can come up with all kinds of theoretical methods for dealing with something like this, it isn't the sort of thing you can test. I mean it is unfeasible (not to mention irresponsible) to build an oil rig and then break it just to test and see how fixes might work. So pretty much everything is unproven, untested and you just have to try shit and see what works.
Now this isn't to say BP is blameless here, there are remediation measures they should have taken, but didn't. The biggest would be having enough booms ready to contain a well disaster (it would take a lot, but really not cost all that much) and training their people in proper booming. That is a proven method for reducing the spread.
However it is just to help deal with the spread, it doesn't actually fix the problem. The problem fixes, well you just don't know since it cannot be tested until an actual disaster happens.
Heck the SIPHONING 5,000 a day from the line they put into the one breach! And that isn't even getting everything coming out of that breach, and there is ANOTHER breach on the line which is gushing oil. The 5,000 a day value is an out and out LIE, and needs to be published as such. The estimates of 20,000-50,000 seem a lot more realistic, which would mean that this would already be the worst spill in history (620,000 - 1,550,000 barrels). And even those seem small considering the rig itself was producing 300,000 - 500,000 barrels a day.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Accept car accidents don't kill of entire ecosystems.
The scale changes, the ethics remain unchanged.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
But when it's a large corporation, we somehow think they should be held to a higher standard?
Because the large corporation is posting billions of dollars in profits because of their drilling?
Because some people are implying that BP engaged in several salvage operations before looking to actually lose the well?
Because a car accident puts the occupants of your vehicle and the other vehicle at risk, not entire countries, their economies and endangered animals in the surrounding environment?
Because (as the article noted) we're about to let Shell start drilling in the Arctic where the seas are rougher and the location more remote to create delays in response times?
I think at this point we could reopen the debate on the effects of a nuclear plant failing compared to an oil line failing. And how much easier and effective it is to drop a cofferdam on a nuclear core than a well miles below the surface of water.
Your argument of it being a one time thing that is unprecedented does not sit well with me when we look to expand on the number of wells we have. Precedent has now been set. Either tighten regulations so that your point (a) doesn't happen and point (b) is actually true. Care to prove point (c)?
When bad things go wrong to corporations making lots and lots of money, then they should be held accountable, girlintraining. Why you rush to BP and the oil industry's rescue, I'll never know.
My work here is dung.
> But when it's a large corporation, we somehow think they should be held to a higher standard? No, I don't think they should.
Why the hell SHOULDN'T they be held to a higher standard? They are a huge corporation that has a huge amount of money therefore they are hold a huge amount of power. They should be at a MUCH higher standard. As an individual I have the power and money that I could probably ruin the environment for my neighborhood... in this case BP holds the money, power, and equipment to ruin an entire coastline.
This statement is fairly typical of American thinking right now: let corporations have all the benefits and none of the responsibilities. It's the individuals that had nothing to do with the bad decisions and cut corners that are paying in our current corporate dominated culture and government.
Your comment juxtaposes itself. Many people HAVE acknowledged that this was an engineering failure. And yes, mistakes are eventually made. Thats why we hold THAT to the same standard as a car accident. Accidents happen, they are sometimes preventable, but they will always happen.
Its the aftermath we're upset about. It's how BP is trying to fix the problem: They are trying to recover as much of the oil as possible, or try to recover as much of the well as possible. They are not viewing it from the point of ecological concern, they are trying to stave off their losses. That's what pisses most of us off.
You accidentally rear end someone. You can get out, offer to pay it, give them your information, or you can back up, speed off, and do your best never to see them again. The latter is obviously going to be less expensive for you, and thats kind of what BP is doing.
In all fairness, we still have no idea what went wrong. I want BP to be dragged across the coals for this as much as the next guy, but the truth of the matter is that we still don't know why the BOP failed, given that it was designed and certified to protect against this very sort of disaster.
As others in this thread have mentioned, several aspects of this accident are unprecedented, and although the oil industry should be faulted for pushing too hard too quickly, this accident may simply have to serve as a learning experience, given that it's entirely possible that BP, Transocean, SLB, and Halliburton were all following the established safety protocols in conformance with past experience.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
We will solve this horrible situation by dumping shredded tires and golf balls into the ocean until the problem is solved!
"But perhaps...
I said until it was solved!
There are multiple accounts saying that BP cut corners when it came to oil rig safety. If this is the case then they need to be held criminally as well as financially accountable for their "accident". If this bankrupts them, so be it.
http://www.thecablevine.com/forum/showthread.php?2434-Eyewitness-Says-BP-Cut...
http://www.blacklistednews.com/?news_id=8748
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/17/867129/-60-Minutes:-Despite-damaged-blowout-preventer,-BP-cut-corners-immediately-before-explosion
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/30/evening-buzz-did-bp-cut-safety-corners-before-oil-rig-blew-up/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/12/bp-whistleblower-claimed_n_573839.html
There is a war going on for your mind.
Maybe the government should step in and put and end to this situation themselves.
So long as they send the bill to BP and not the taxpayers, I'm for it.
Reply to That ||
since when did "dump a bunch of shit on it and hope that plugs it up" become a formal strategy?
About a week ago, if I recall correctly.
Before that, it was "let's slip a tube down in the middle of the hole so we can keep sucking some of the oil out of it, while we fill a couple of tankers and stall for time."
Before that, it was "let's put a funnel on top of it so we can keep sucking the oil out of it."
The "top kill" only became an option after all other options that allowed them to continue extracting at least a small portion of the oil from the well were utterly exhausted.
And, remember, the "top kill" option will probably require the fast drilling of a couple of "relief wells" nearby - and since they are "relief wells" there will be a great deal of push to exclude the same fucking safety features that would have prevented this disaster in the first place in the name of urgency this time rather than saving money. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some congresscritter managed to get the relief wells paid for with FEMA money.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I'm not sure that "BOZO" is really the correct term to be using, especially given that the link you provided states quite clearly that the explosion happened 5 years ago.
The leak is not uncontained. The BOP and (partially-destroyed) riser stack are providing resistance against the flow of oil. The concern is that this proposed solution could cause enough pressure to build up inside the BOP that the entire apparatus fails completely, which could then increase the flow of oil by at least an order of magnitude.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Designed? Possibly. Certain safety standards that are mandatory for offshore drilling near other countries were not used on this rig. Certified? Not really. If someone did certify the safety precautions, they should lose whatever authority they have to certify anything. How many reports of safety precautions and features being overlooked, ignored, or just plain not done properly do we need before we can consider that this well was not being built with adequate safety precautions?
Yeah... you might want to read up on that some... it is quite clear to anyone who has read any of the reports out there that safety protocols and industry best practices were not followed.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Accidents are rarely accidents, someone fucked up.
How exactly does someone fucking up preclude it from being an accident? In fact, so far as I know, someone fucking up is pretty much inherent to the term, 'accident.' It's very rare that someone fucks up intentionally. It's very rare that accidents just spontaneously happen without someone dropping the ball somewhere along the way. To use a car analogy, even if a tire blowout causes an accident, that often is due to someone fucking up by not checking their tire pressure regularly, or someone disposing of hazardous materials (screws, nails, glass etc) on the road intentionally or unintentionally (improperly tightened bolt, improperly secured goods in a truck whatever). I don't think the OP was trying to say that nobody fucked up. I think the OP was trying to say that, yeah, somebody fucked up. It caused a legitimate accident, a bad one true, but an accident nonetheless, and we should hold that entity that fucked up responsible. The point he (or she?) was making was that BP is being held responsible. They are trying to fix the problem. They have been taking numerous steps since the accident to fix the problem. So far, those have not worked. So, rather than get frothing mad about it and scream, "OMG teh evul corporations!!!!!!!," maybe we should calm down a bit and let the people capable of solving the problem (i.e. those folks who have experience at drilling and operating heavy equipment in high-risk underwater environments [oil rig workers]) keep trying to solve the problem.
Frankly, that seems like a much more level-headed statement and assertion than claiming that, 'thousands of folks are screwed...' fishermen have no fish to sell, and ocean front property is now ruined.
That's just my two cents though.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Except that the government makes more off taxes on oil and it's downstream products than companies like BP make in profit on oil.
I don't have the tax numbers at my fingertips, but it seems that BP posted $93,000,000 USD profits per day for the first quarter of 2010.
Reply to That ||
I was watching a documentary on this Sunday. They interviewed one of the rig survivors. According to the survivor, pieces of the blowout prevention device had come up the pipe weeks before. They didn't bother to fix the BOP. When one of the controllers on the BOP failed, again, weeks before the accident, they didn't bother to fix the BOP. When Transocean wanted to put 3 cement plugs in the well, sandwiching the heavy drilling fluid, the BP managers said "No, use 2 plugs," so that it would take BP less time to unseal the well when they hooked up the pumping rig. According to the survivor, it was when they took the pressure off the well, with only two plugs, that the plugs failed.
This is people putting money before safety. This isn't an "accident". I would consider an earthquake ripping the BOP off the well an accident. I would consider a jet crashing on the rig and somehow managing to destroy the BOP an accident. This was people cutting corners and getting caught.
(Note well: This assumes the survivor was telling the truth.)
Accept car accidents don't kill of entire ecosystems.
OK, I accept.
But when it's a large corporation, we somehow think they should be held to a higher standard?
No, just the safety standards they're supposed to be held to, which they felt they should not be required to have. If you fight tooth and nail against requiring safeguards, I will blame you when your lack of those safeguards cause globally catastrophic problems.
True, though why did we allow them a month of spilling millions of gallons of oil into the bay while attempting to save the well in a way that it could be re-used? Maybe I'm just old and jaded, but rescuing the bay should have been priority 1 over rescuing the financial investment.
Also, shrimp has been terrible for the past month. Thanks, BP!
The ______ Agenda
By passing a bill outlawing oil spills, naturally.
In all fairness, we still have no idea what went wrong
Yes we do. BP chose to use two instead of three plugs, purely to save time to get at the oil, and against Transocean's advice. BP blamed everyone else, but at the end of the day, they had an argument about these plugs and protocol, and as the bill payers, they made the final decision to proceed against the profession and safety advice.
What needs to happen now is name the names, and get them into the public news instead of allowing them to cower behind the corporate image. At the end of the day, greedy people fucked up and caused this. Name and shame time.
In all fairness, we still have no idea what went wrong. I want BP to be dragged across the coals for this as much as the next guy, but the truth of the matter is that we still don't know why the BOP failed, given that it was designed and certified to protect against this very sort of disaster.
There's at least one survivor who claims that the BOP was punctured weeks before the blast, but that they were pressured in continuing operations regardless because they were running behind schedule and "time is money".
Donate free food here
Uh, yes we do. The BOP failed because the gasket that was in it sheared off and came back up the pipe. Despite this, BP executives told them to push on and not worry about it because they were already behind.
"...during a test, they closed the gasket. But while it was shut tight, a crewman on deck accidentally nudged a joystick, applying hundreds of thousands of pounds of force, and moving 15 feet of drill pipe through the closed blowout preventer. Later, a man monitoring drilling fluid rising to the top made a troubling find.
"He discovered chunks of rubber in the drilling fluid. He thought it was important enough to gather this double handful of chunks of rubber and bring them into the driller shack. I recall asking the supervisor if this was out of the ordinary. And he says, 'Oh, it's no big deal.' And I thought, 'How can it be not a big deal? There's chunks of our seal is now missing,'"
And there you have it. They were being pushed too hard, and made huge mistakes. BP needs to pay dearly for this, maybe even be put out of business completely, so that all the other companies can witness what happens to them if they do the same thing.
Let them factor that in to their actuarial tables..a big fat "closed for business" if a mistake like this takes place.
If someone did certify the safety precautions, they should lose whatever authority they have to certify anything.
Certifying a process and making sure the process is performed are two very separate acts. I would investigate how much of each were to blame before going nuts.
From what I can tell, there are hugely involved and expensive processes in place to prevent this sort of disaster. Could the procedures be better? Probably. Were the procedures followed to the letter? I seriously doubt it.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
According to this 60 minutes report, the BOP was possibly damaged weeks before the incident but not fixed and one of the two control modules of the BOP wasn't functioning properly but this condition was not investigated fully and corrected.
Also Transocean wanted to finish the well by inserting 3 concrete plugs with finishing mud in between them to close off the pipe. BP didn't want the mud. This would sped up the next phase of production but it removed some of the effectiveness of the plugs to seal the pipe. BP got it's way.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Or, to rephrase... Explosives are often used to put out oil well fires on land. Then, utilizing the remaining wellhead (and possibly Christmas tree) structure (which, fortunately, weren't all vaporized by cowboys who think "if some explosives are good, more are better"), crews cap the well using mechanical means (such as installing a new valve).
It seems to me that the last thing that one would want to do in this case is blow up the BOP - it's routing, and apparently choking off much of, the flow. If a failed explosive attempt were to destroy/disconnect the BOP yet not seal the well I think we would be looking back at the current flow nostalgically. Given the apparent lack of experience using explosives to deal with a situation like this it seems likely too risky to attempt -- given that the relief wells are eventually expected to solve the problem.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
From what I can tell, there are hugely involved and expensive processes in place to prevent this sort of disaster.
In the last three months of 2009, BP posted $3.45 billion in profits. That isn't gross income, that's PROFIT.
I think they can afford a few million to make sure their shit is set up correctly and safely.
Living With a Nerd
Ah, interesting. So because they want cheap gas, it's okay for BP to wipe out their livelihood, right? I mean, what's the point of your post other than to be a rather shameless immoral apologetic for ecological destruction.
I'm coming into your yard next week to crap on your lawn. Don't bother to thank me, just give me $50.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
All of your links are to a single person, Mike Mason, an electrical engineer, making claims about equipment he doesn't service.
Now, where's my +5, Informative? Or will this be a -1, Troll for not immediately jumping to hysterics and saying we should burn BP to the ground as profiteering gluttons -- which is what's happened to all my other posts so far.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
On what basis do you claim that the dispersant has been effective in reducing the impact? I have to say I trust the judgment of the EPA on that more than I trust J. Random Slashdotter or BP, but I'm willing to look at expert opinion if you can cite some.
When corporate criminals are fouling the planet, I'm all for government agencies interfering with them.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Why do you think they are/were trying to "save the well"?
From the early days of the disaster, BP has (I think) said they were going to permanently cap the well with "concrete" via the relief wells. They started drilling the first relief well very quickly - I was surprised how soon they had a drill rig out there, those things aren't stocked on the shelf at WalMart.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
I'm almost afraid to say this, for fear of a flame war. Really I'm not trying to make a statement for or against a political figure, I'm making a comment about the fickleness of the Americans:
I am no fan of G.W. Bush, but you can bet if he were in charge, he would be getting reamed up and down over this. I am astonished, flabbergasted, that I haven't seen Obama held accountable at the same level that Bush would have been (and was, on similar disasters).
Have I just been missing it (because I don't watch Fox News), or am I right?
And is this a statement of the fickleness of the Americans? or is this a statement of how effective Obama's team is at deflecting blame? or is there still a halo around him?
Please, don't let this evolve into a "GWB suxors" or "One Big A$$ Mistake, America" argument. I'm curious if I'm right or wrong on my assessment, not if you think Obama sucks or rocks. I DO think that the president should be held accountable to protect us from "all threats, both foreign and domestic", but I don't think that the "reaming" of the president is necessarily in order. I'm more interested in consistency of accountability.
Link
Criminal Negligence.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Great... Now even Slashdot comment threads are starting to have EULAs.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Related link from Harpers.org April 2009:
On Friday, the New York Times reported that the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) repeatedly violated environmental requirements when approving oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, ignoring and overruling scientists who noted the risk of potentially catastrophic spills. In the April 2009 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Bryant Urstadt discussed the “culture of ethical failure” at the MMS and its wasteful Royalty-in-Kind program.
It's not very long (a few pages), but a shocking read.
With the pressures and temperatures involved this is actually a very difficult problem to solve.
You can't just put a cork in the damaged pipes - the pressures are on the scale of being unbelivable. I believe it is around 150,000 PSI. Virtually nothing is going to withstand that sort of pressure without a lot of help.
Similarly, I keep seeing posts about how TransOcean should have "fixed" the blowout preventer when it was apparent that some seals were breaking down. Or when one of the redundant controllers failed. The problem is, it was a mile underwater. I do not believe anyone in the area had a means of working at that depth. Also, you can't just turn a valve under the blowout preventer - it is pretty much the bottom valve. So replacing this isn't an option - you are pretty much stuck with it unless you are prepared to do something drastic.
On land, you could (possibly) remove everything from the well head and accept the massive leak that would occur. I do not believe there are many land-based wells where the outflow pressure is anywhere near 150,000 PSI. So changing the blowout preventor is nasty, going to spew oil everywhere but is at least possible. At 5000+ feet of water and with the entire Gulf squeezing the oil out through that pipe changing the blowout preventer is simply not possible.
You folks do understand that the weight of the water above the well is what is causing this problem, right?
Another silly point people seem to be hung up on is that BP is working on this and the government isn't. Well, the government as a regulator has some involvement but about all they can do is make rules. There is no government oil well rescue service. The facilities do not exist within the US government, and probably for good reason - it doesn't happen all that much. The US could, I suppose, nationalize BP because of this. The problem with that idea is that a lot of other companies, oil and otherwise, would take this as an immediate indication that any US presence was no longer safe. The same thing happened in a lot of Central and South American countries upon nationalizing companies. The reason a lot of companies are in the US is because it is convenient to be close to a large market and a well educated labor force. Make noises like assets aren't safe from being nationalized and a lot of companies will take their assets elsewhere.
You folks also understand that this well is in international waters, right? The US can drill there or any other country. The US has attempted to claim 200 mile nautical boundaries before, but that is pretty much a joke today. The fact that the oil is there means it will be taken out by someone. We get to choose whether it is the US or someone else. I'd say Venezuela or Mexico are likely candidates if we abandon drilling in the Gulf. At this point I would say complete abandonment of US offshore drilling is likely, regardless of the economic consequences.
Rand = troll, that sort of thing?
Yeah, I love that I got moderated troll for quoting Rand Paul. I guess there aren't many libertarians with the courage of their convictions, at least none with mod points today. Frankly, if you think his dad feels any differently, you're naive. Ron Paul is just a much more savvy and experienced politician.
No true. The ethics in dealing accidental bumping someone mail box and leaving a scuff mark is not the same as knowingly driving an unsafe vehicle and then slamming into a group of kids.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...is something of a misnomer. A lot of what passes for "engineering" is actually processes proven empirically, through years of experience, rather than grounded in solid theory. Petroleum engineering is taught based upon what has worked for 80+ years. And petroleum engineers sit in office cubicles, not the rigs. Rigs are supervised by workers who are very experienced at what they do, but really have no way to handle situations "outside the box" because there isn't a drilling manual to consult when things go wrong. Rig workers depend upon the initial calculations of the engineers, and their own experiences of successful drilling operations. I suspect things on the BP rig happened so quickly, and were so outside the norm of crew experience, that there wasn't much chance of recovery. Like they used to teach us in the oilfield, if the mud comes out of the hole, you've got a problem. If the mud disappears in the hole, just wait: you've got an even bigger problem.
And yes, IAAPE.
And from a liability standpoint, there SHOULDN'T be a difference, but there is. You run into a car, you have to pay for it. BP blows up the gulf: they should pay for it. Except they won't.
Oh, they say they will, and if they don't, they'll be made to.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The summary:
The article:
The kill line is part of the BOP. Nothing is being forced back down the riser (the bent, broken, patched, leaking mile long pipe now laying on the ocean floor).
Here's nice graphic showing what they seem to be trying to do.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Agreed. But when the process that was certified does meet the industry best practices (such as acoustic triggers), there is a problem with the certification.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
As someone else pointed out above, it seems the well was damaged weeks before the explosion - and it was the explosion safety equipment that was damaged. Despite this, TransOcean (working for BP), decided to carry on with the drilling.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7129225.ece
If this is true, then BP is to blame for not watching over TransOcean sufficiently but TransOcean should be charged with criminal misconduct or whatever the equivalent legal term would be.
The reason: its worth gambling something bad won't happen to ensure the company makes more money. Something bad happened, and now the citizens of those countries boarding on the ocean region the well is in get to pay the price.
Corporations have no inherent morality, nor any incentive to behave morally. Profits are the only motive. This is an excellent indication of this.
Its time to change this I think. The world can no longer afford these large corporations and the destruction they wreak on our environment. Of course, we need to learn to do with fewer luxuries if the environment can't afford them too.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
So, once again the design wasn't really that bad. It was the humans running the equipment that screwed it up. Hearing stuff like this, especially when you bring up rubber seals, reminds me of the Challenger disaster.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"After attempting many options to allow the continued collection of crude oil, BP is finally considering a 'top kill' option that will kill the well."
Why are people coming up with this fantasy that BP wants to keep the hole viable, and wants to continue collecting or be able in the future to collect oil from this hole? Some people have developed the misconception that the only reason BP hasn't tried to plug the hole is that they want the oil to flow -- i.e. $$$$$$. It's total nonsense. Why?
A) the hole at depth and the equipment on top of it is damaged. It would be foolhardy and inconsistent with industry practice in a situation like this -- especially if instability in the hole due to melting hydrates is an issue at depth in the well -- to try to keep the hole operational. The plan was, and always will be, to stop the flow from the hole and then cement and abandon this hole once it is stopped. To produce this field they will have to drill new holes. That was and always will be the case, and BP said that was the case from the start;
B) they deployed various collection devices earlier because they are faster to deploy and do not depend on being certain about the state of the deeper borehole or the blowout preventer (BOP), both of which had to be thoroughly assessed before attempting techniques that would plug the well, especially when it was known that the BOP failed to perform the way it was supposed to and the hole was unstable. You don't fiddle with things like this when they are in an "unknown state". If they proceeded to try a "top kill" without that assessment they would run the risk of making things worse if a subsurface blowout occurred when pressures built up (i.e. the pipe failed below the sea bottom) or something failed in the BOP;
C) the oil coming out (even with upward-revised numbers) is a piddling amount compared to normal oil production rates in these types of wells when they are working properly, and the value of the oil is dwarfed by the costs of collecting it like this. Even if it were flowing at 10000 barrels a day and they collected it all, that's a "mere" $700000/day (10000 * ~$70 USD/barrel), which wouldn't cover half the daily costs of all the vessels and other gear they have on-site trying to fix the problem ($500k/day is routine for ONE rig when you add in all the materials, personnel, and support. Here are costs for just the rig contract alone -- the Semisub 4000'+ WD is the relevant one at $411k/day). Usually a rig or subsea production system in this setting will be producing from multiple holes simultaneously -- that's the only way it is economic. It would be economically stupid to try to produce from the well in its current state and with the setup they have on site. Get a clue, people!
Anyone who thinks the delay in resorting to a "top kill" solution is due to some kind of ulterior financial motive on the part of BP doesn't understand the technical challenges of doing any of this stuff at extreme depths or what the real economic situation is. They're resorting to a "top kill" now because they've finished the X-ray and gamma-ray studies of the damaged BOP that give them confidence the whole thing isn't going to blow up in their face when they try to plug it. The other techniques were worth trying in the interim. That's the whole explanation for what they've done. It's nothing nefarious.
Hold BP and other oil companies responsible for accidents. Remember that they are drilling at the ends of the Earth to satisfy *your* demand for this resource, so perhaps try to cut back a bit. Beef up safety regulations and inspections. Diligently work on alternative energy sources. But for god's green Earth's sake, leave the stupid conspiracy theories out of it. This "they haven't plugged it because they want the oil to flow so they can make money" one doesn't make a speck of technical or economic sense.
Does your car typically threaten all the native creatures for miles around and the livelihoods of many people after it is involved in an accident?
::shrug:: my manager thought it was funny :p
For those who are curious, the guy actually tried to take me to court...and the case was thrown out almost instantly, due to there being no correlation between chaging his air filter and O2 sensors with his brakes "not working".
The fact that we never even took the tires off his car, and the fact that his car stopped fine even after the accident occured, was all the judge needed to hear.
Living With a Nerd
You have no idea what you're talking about.
First, it's not a bay. It's the Gulf of Mexico.
Second, no attempt was made to "save the well". If you knew anything about drilling (or even if you'd even of bothered to read the freaking summary) you'd know that the reason drastic measures like injecting a plug into the well have not been tried is that there's a very real possibility this might do further damage to the well and make the spill significantly worse, possibly to the point of not being able to stop the leak at all. Every step of this process (from remotely activating the blowout preventer, placing the "dome" on top of the break, and syphoning off the oil as it comes up) has been done with meticulous care specifically to prevent making the situation worse, as we still don't even know why it happened!
Do you know why we don't have "disinterested" parties regulating this industry or overseeing the cleanup? Because they're people like you, who don't know what the hell they're talking about but are perfectly happy to act like the solutions are obvious and simple.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
I think it's clear from your posted conversation that the vehicle failed because you're Freebirth scum.
I'm beginning to think their chief engineer on this project is Wile E. Coyote.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Accidents are rarely accidents, someone fucked up.
I agree. Maybe we should start calling these events "neglidents" (I say, it's a joke, son!)... Let's use the obligatory /. car analogy:
Having a heart attack and driving into a bunny orphanage: Accident.
Texting and driving into a driving into a bunny orphanage: Neglident.
An elephant jumps out from behind a truck, you swerve only to crash into a bunny orphanage: Accident.
Going too fast poor weather, you lose control and crash into a bunny orphanage: Neglident.
Accident should only apply to specific events where the cause and outcome would be unforeseen prior to the time of the event. For everything else there's Neglidents®.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Obama isn't being reamed on this because of ideology. It's the Republican ideology of "Drill Baby Drill!" and it's the Democrats who have been against off-shore drilling. This disaster could only have helped Obama.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Obama is getting a pass because the other side uses "Drill, Baby, Drill" to taunt him for his lack of enthusiasm for domestic oil production. His position on offshore drilling was pretty moderate: allow it after some environmental impact studies. But that wasn't enough for the right. This makes it a little awkward for them now, and I think they'd rather pretend the whole thing has gone away.
And, yes, Fox News was pushing the "this is Obama's Katrina" meme for a while.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/16/60minutes/main6490197.shtml?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It is *not* easy to gather up the oil in the water and it is definitely *not* easy to just stick a cap in the tube.
Also, you speak of waste (and other people speak of BP being greedy and wanting solutions that gather the oil rather than stop it)...I saw evidence somewhere that the total amount of oil expected to spill was on the order of magnitude of 7.5 minutes worth of the worlds consumption. Believe me, this is not significant waste and certainly not a significant financial loss to BP (in terms of the oil value)--they want this thing shut quickly and cheaply just as much as you do.
Bottles.
Obama hasn't "taken charge" because he knows that BP is going to catch the blame when none of these other "fixes" work. That's smart. Contrast this with the actual Katrina: there were known things that could have been done to relieve the disaster situation in New Orleans, that were actually the responsibility of the Federal government to do, that did not get done. Bush actually failed to act when there was work to be done, whereas there is not much here for Obama to do.
Yeah, for people complaining about how BP's initial responses were to try and salvage the well, or to stick a hose to keep collecting oil:
Salvage operations, if they worked, would have been a clean solution that probably would have stopped the leak a lot faster. BP's been talking about the top kill for quite a while, as they prepare to do it right, because doing it wrong could be WAY more catastrophic.
The hose is actively reducing the amount of oil that's leaking by an immense amount. Don't knock it.
Humans tend to fuck up. A design that doesn't fail safe in that case, IS bad. You gotta take that factor into account.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
There is more than one Mike in them there links.
Mike Mason, the guy in the photo there and Mike Williams, the guy in the CBS' 60 Minutes". The "electrical engineer".
BTW, those two Mikes talk about different cases of negligence by BP.
Also, the first link in the GPP is an analysis report by another guy called Glenn Stehle, an engineer with "extensive experience in drilling operations".
Then there is Bob Bea, a professor of engineering at the University of California, who got the job to analyze the Deepwater Horizon accident.
That is like.. four guys and a couple of cases of "cutting corners when it came to oil rig safety" already.
Then there are couple of more guys in that second link.
So like... Do I now get my +5 Informative or a +5 Insightful?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Just start selling Hummers to all the fish- they'll use up all that oil in no time.
My webcomic
Unless we prove they were criminally negligent, the most BP will pay is $75 million. Those are the laws we passed when we opened the Gulf up to drilling. Because, you know, oil companies make so little profit off of all this, there's no way they could afford to pay for their mistakes. And this is America, land of the free! We don't hold corporations accountable for their mistakes here, that would be infringing on their FREEDOMS!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Worse than just taxing them, the oil industries are actually subsidized at this point. They get tax cuts and subsidies all over the place, and look at their profits and compare that to their tax payments. A nice $5 per gallon tax on all petrol products paid at the time of extraction or importation would work great. I'd implement it with a $0.50 tax increase per year for 10 years. It would make people pay attention to energy costs. And when the costs of travel are that high, people will take mass transit, move, or choose to pay the costs to live their lifestyle. Oh, and we'd have to include energy cost in the CPI, else we'd end up starving lots of elderly when inflation hits.
Learn to love Alaska
Don't forget that a production rig and a semi-submersible drilling rig are not the same. There's a reason BP never planned to leave the Deepwater Horizon sitting there pumping oil - that's not what it's for. Similarly production rigs are not made for optimal(?) drilling.
The Development Driller III is the semi submersible that BP brought in to drill the first relief well. This was already under contract to BP - but it may have been in use (probably making the contract issues easier, but possibly requiring shutting down another drilling operation safely). Note this is not your "fathers" drilling rig. It was on site on April 27 - about five days after the rig collapsed on April 22. Unless it was close by and not in use (and, obviously, these things are not bought/leased to sit around idle), that's pretty good in my book. Note that, unsurprisingly, BP doesn't have a lot of suitable idle rigs in the Gulf (note that the Mad Dog, for example, isn't suitable -- if nothing else because its rated water depth is inadequate).
Also, getting a less capable rig in two days earlier, for example, would make no sense if that rig would require four days more to drill the relief well (because, for example, it used 93-foot-long stands of pipe rather than 135-foot-long stands of pipe or had longer setup time).
And, how exactly, would you get a semi-sub "anywhere in the world" in 24 hours? The Discoverer Enterprise (which I believe is being used to drill the second relief well) weighs more than 75 million pounds, is 835 feet long, and 418 feet tall. The only way I know to move ANYTHING halfway around the world in less than 24 hours is by air -- and I'm pretty sure this beast won't fit in a First Class seat, let alone a Coach seat. Come to think about it, even the Antonov An-225 comes up a bit short (by about 74.5 million pounds in weight capacity, about 414 feet in height, and at least 560 feet in length). Oh, and since there would be insufficient time to deliver it from land via traditional oceangoing tugs and the An-225 can't land in the ocean (well, at least not more than once), one would have to do an airdrop. Building the world's largest (to put it mildly) parachute to set this the Discoverer Enterprise down at the right place would be challenging to say the least. And, I don't know of any existing rockets that could be successfully used to slow its descent.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
they were pressured in continuing operations regardless because they were running behind schedule and "time is money".
In another post, someone mentioned that BP is making about a billion dollars per month in profit.
Somehow I doubt this one well would have made a big difference in their overall take. And truth be told, they lost the whole thing, and took a big hit to their rep as well.
Funny thing about greed, it's when you actually lose sight of the bottom line.
Here is another one for you highlighting BPs poor safety record, but you will probably handwave this away too.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/business/09bp.html?ref=us
There is a war going on for your mind.
The fact that you saw "Obama's Katrina?" on MSNBC seems a little disingenuous, although I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you just don't watch a lot of TV news. The fact that there's a question mark means it was probably a story about this very topic, with the left-leaning MSNBC trying to discredit such a claim. A little searching finds a clip from The Ed Show on MSNBC doing exactly that.
* There was a leak in the hydraulic system that provides power to the shear rams.
* The BOP had been modified in unexpected ways. The underwater control panel had been disconnected from the bore ram, and instead connected to a test ram. Drawings of the BOP provided by Transocean to BP do not correspond to the structure that is on the ocean bottom.
* The BOP's shear ram is not powerful enough to cut through joints in the well pipe. It is only effective on the body of a drill pipe. Since 10% of the drill pipe is threaded joints, the BOP is expected to succeed on only 90% of the drill pipe.
* Emergency control to the BOP may have failed in multiple ways. Cameron, the BOP's manufacturer, has stated that the explosion may have severed the communication link so the BOP never received the instruction to engage. Before the backup dead man's switch will engage, communications, power and hydraulic lines must all be severed; Cameron, has stated it is possible BOPs hydraulic lines were intact after the explosion, in which case the unit would not engage. Of the two control pods for the deadman switch, the one that has been inspected so far had a dead battery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Investigation
Obviously in your case "as far as I'm aware" isn't very far at all. You have been arguing a false position for multiple posts without bothering to check your facts in even the most cursory way.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton