BP Prepares Complex "Top Kill" Bid To Plug Well

shmG excerpts from the International Business Times: "Government and BP officials are hopeful after extensive preparations, but are not guaranteeing that a complex attempt early this week to cap an uncontrolled underwater oil spill from a well in the Gulf of Mexico will be successful. The so-called 'top kill' procedure that oil major BP is tentatively scheduled to attempt on Tuesday involves plugging up the well by pumping thick 'drilling mud' and cement into it. While it had been attempted on above-ground wells, it has never been tried at the depths involved with this spill, nearly 5,000 feet below the surface."

Comments

And how would you do that?

[Sycraft-fu]

How would you test it? After all, you can't know something is fool proof, that it'll work no matter what, unless you can test it. How would you test this? Do you build multiple wells, then break them on purpose to see what happens? Not only is that unfeasible, it would create the kind of disaster you want to prevent if something went wrong.

You can't test this kind of shit. It appears that there was a failsafe for this, but it didn't work. Should it have been better? Apparently, but that wasn't known and there wasn't a way to test it.

It's easy to cast blame in hindsight, and certainly there were problems (the biggest being that they didn't have the amount of booming equipment necessary for containment which is a lot, but not that expensive) but it is a complex situation. There is no way to test things, there are no sure fire solutions.

All we can hope is that this disaster acts as a lesson and using the data we are able to prevent it from happening again.

Re:And how would you do that?

[rrohbeck]

The last thing you do is act like social psychopaths in search of money at any cost and continue.

Yes! I'd rather they acted like a good capitalist business in search of money at any cost and continue.

Re:And how would you do that?

[rrohbeck]

Of course. I'm a taxpayer. That's how the system works. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. Obviously the majority of voters has liked this system for the last couple of decades, otherwise they might have done something about it.

Oh and you may need to have your sarcasm-o-meter recalibrated.

Re:will they pay ?

[mgblst]

Oh no, increasing oil prices, that is the worse thing in the world.

You know, the only action that is guaranteed to reduce the amount of oil we use, so that we need less rigs like this. No, can't have that.

Fuck you!