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Gulf Oil Leak Plugged?
RobHart writes "The LA Times is reporting that the Gulf oil leak appears to have been plugged by the 'top kill.' 'Thad Allen, who is coordinating the government response, says the well still has low pressure, but cement will be used to cap the well permanently as soon as the pressure hits zero.'"
I'm glad to see that this solution seems to be working well. The aftermath, however, is going to be a freakin' political circus. I'm simultaneously excited and dreading it.
Living With a Nerd
This is just step one of the top kill. It's just plugged with mud, which is still streaming out of the hole. Don't start celebrating until they actually top it with concrete.
I've got to wonder, if this does work is BP going to go ahead with their "relief well".
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
to control the flow of nonsense over the failed well, contractors will first pump T5000 cement into his mouth under pressure, then fit ankle weights, and send him to inspect the work personally in the Gulf.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Pretty soon we can move on to fining BP off the face of that planet.
Raters gon' rate.
An interesting comparison between the 1979 Ixtoc oil disaster and the BP disaster. Note that indeed Transocean and Sedco merged in 1999.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=127_1274931222
Why didn't they just call the Little Dutch Boy?
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
I've got to wonder, if this does work is BP going to go ahead with their "relief well".
You can bet on it, got to keep up the cash flow.
I thought the 5000 barrel estimate came from BP, but the article lays it at the feet of the Coast Guard... is this just mistaken reporting, or did it really come from the Coast Guard? If I put on my paranoid hat for a minute, this is BP engaging in post-operation PR cleanup...
http://www.tenjou.net/
Good thing we waited over a month to do this.
if you had a policy which ignored industry and federal and state and local standards on driver hours per week or hours per day, and it was reasonable to conclude that your policy played a role in the driver falling asleep, then yes.
If, on the other hand, you had a policy which reinforced (or even outdid) the safety procedures, and despite quality employee and contractor screening, despite training, despite good policy, something bad still happened (individual negligence or simply bad luck), then no.
In short, management's role is reducing the likelihood of major disasters. Did they do their job? I don't know the answer, but I suspect that the next few years will include a number of investigations to figure that out.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Whew...I was getting worried about this one. But, it looks like we can chalk up another victory for Obama and his environmental record. This incident should put a stop to offshore drilling, which is good. The price of gasoline should go up to eight dollars a gallon, that should keep people from wasting it.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The person at the top of this mess in the US gov (the director of mineral resources) got invited to resign (and did). Im sure that a few of the others are going to follow her example.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Sometimes we need to toughen up those pansy-ass dolphins, birds, and turtles. If we hadn't cuddled them for so long they wouldn't be going extinct. Adversity breeds strength.
And the same goes for you, Pandas. You're next! Oh, you'll be mating up a storm when we finish.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Right, because the relief well doesn't have anything to do with, you know, being a relief well.
And then every 108 minutes someone will have to enter the correct code in time or the well will blow again.
Now maybe we can bring in Kevin Costner to clean up the water. To be fair to Costner, I don't see why at least some significant portion of the oil could not be centrifuged out of the water if one had a big enough cream separator and access to the 30,000HP engine that they used for the top kill pumping.
Nullius in verba
The well is NOT plugged. BP has YET TO CONFIRM ANYTHING. This mud that is now spewing out is just as toxic as the oil, and as long as it's still spewing out this is still going on. Until they can equalize the pressure, this is not over. Fox is reporting that the report was pre-mature, as well as several other news companys, and BP itself. Once again, this is not over yet!
Just wow. Do you (or can you) read? They are drilling exactly where the oil is, that's the reason its coming out in such a flow.
Oh, and just to be clear, you do know that BP stands for BRITISH PETROLEUM, right? How exactly are they helping AMERICAN energy independence?
Typical response from a brain-dead, listens-to-Hannity-too-often-to-think-for-themselves righty. Next we will hear about how we should be donating to BP, to help them overcome this terrible tragedy.
About a week and a half before this incident, a similar explosion was reported in the same well. The response? Nothing. keep drilling, gotta have that money. Two weeks before that, they pulled rubber and plastic from the well, remains of the gasket at the bottom, designed to prevent this sort of thing. Response? Nothing, it costs money to fix, keep drilling. Now we have a major spill incident, and its time to put their disaster planning in place.... oh wait! That costs money too, so lets just skip that part. They admit no recovery plan was ever put in place, in an area where they know they are taking a 'huge financial risk'. Why do you think that is?
I know why. Because they know they will get taken care of, just like they always do, and it won't end up hurting them a bit.
They (BB) say they can't confirm that. They will give an updated status later today. This is from Danish TV, so no link, sorry.
What they didn't tell you is that it was plugged by all the dead marine life falling to the bottom of the Gulf.
to stop the leak in its entirety. the goal was to control the rate of flow and presumably the public outrage that ensued long enough to permit BP to establish functional replacement well before quickly and easily shutting down the leak. until such time oil could be extracted from the surrounding waters, cleaned up, and sent out for refining. this is called disaster recovery planning and it never entails the stoppage of work or the business.
Estimates by BP engineers stated relief wells wouldnt be ready until around this saturday and sure enough, BP has managed to stall the entire world long enough to have something ready to transition to so as not to disrupt refinery production profits.
now, had the administration taken over the well we would have seen the immediate closure of it, the worst case scenario in business terms for BP as it would have been formally branded as incompetent and likely never allowed access to another US shore again. the CEO is not the head of the company, but a powerful PR tool used by controlling boards of directors to disseminate information to key customers like the government in a timely manner, and as a feel-good effort for the general public to see. CEO's have no control over anything whatsoever and the classic mistake made by customers is assuming they ARE in control.
caspitalism continues, profit continues, and financial advisers to BP likely drove this effort in its entirety from the PR spin to the eventual shutdown of the well. To contrast: in russia the well was nuked, the company reorganized with perhaps a few executions for incompetence, and the operations resumed by better people or with more training. money never took the reigns.
Good people go to bed earlier.
latest "live" thread with great insights in the comments: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6515
Relevant links to top kill procedure (scroll to comments in each, they're very good.)
Deepwater Oil Spill - Permissions and Concerns about Top Kill http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6513
Deep Water Spill - Waiting for Top Kill (more updated tech) http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6509
The Gulf Deepwater Oil Spill - the Top Kill Attempt (the technical aspect of what just happened) http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6505
The Gulf Deepwater Oil Spill, barriers, flow rates, and top kill http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6501
Hope you find this informative...
Now it's plugged with mud. With the flow much reduced, concrete can be put in.
One hurricane season and the mess will be gone. 8 to 14 hurricanes are expected in the Atlantic region by the end of the year.
Relief wells will be drilled; after all, there's definitely oil down there. The reservoir will be pumped out.
Everybody will be a lot more serious about blowout preventers.
More equipment for dealing with such problems will be on standby in some Gulf port for decades to come.
No big deal.
You're right! They should have just edited a config file or two. It's easy! They just sat there for a month! It would have been, like, reported in the news if they had tried anything else. I saw *nothing* on Boing Boing or Daily WTF about it.
Honestly, this site sometimes...
Perhaps I just don't understand all the complicated factors involved with this type of situation, but I was wondering why BP couldn't have just slid a larger tube over the rupture and essentially funnel much of the oil some place contained. If you can divert the oil to another tube you could then pump it to a taker-barge and then deal with it there *before* it gets into the Gulf.
Yeah, I've got nothing...
With 9/11 being a conspiracy (Bush knew about/planned it), and Katrina's handling being a conspiracy theory (Bush blew up the levies)... Where are all the conspiracy theorists on this one? Did Obama cause the leak so that he can push against the oil companies and car companies even more?
I'm not supporting such a theory, just curious why such theories haven't been pushed by those same people pushing the former theories.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
The gulf of mexico will matter to you, very much, since you will be paying for the cleanup anyway.
See, for all the 'free market' babble spewed by most Americans, they have no idea that we actually don't have one. For a free market to function correctly, all costs MUST be internalized. The cost of every environmental cleanup, every single thing done to reduce emissions, the cost of reducing the carbon dioxide produced from burning gas, it should ALL be included in the price of gas. It isn't. That is the only reason gas isn't 15$ a gallon right now. Do you honestly think we would still have this oil addiction, if gas cost what it should?
Here is the ultracool part. You are paying for it, you just don't know it. They externalize all the costs they can, so the price of gas stays low. But we are all still paying that price, in higher taxes, government paid cleanups, increasing ecological damage, and more. Its all hidden, piling up all the time. The reason we don't have alternative energy sources, and energy independence already, is because we still believe gas is CHEAP.
So later this year, when you think that the gulf matters not a bit to you on a daily basis, don't forget to send in your tax check, when the government pays for the cleanup of BP's negligence.
Though the name's confusing, a "relief well" isn't a separate well into the original reservoir that can be put into production. It's a well that's drilled at at an angle, calculated to intercept the bore of the original well somewhere in the rock above the reservoir. If it intercepts it, pressure gets diverted up through the new well, which is presumably under control, and then a bunch of heavy mud is pumped in to plug it up.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
now if only we could plug the flow of money to the bastards.
A Relief Well isn't for production. So yes, it's not really something you can question...
If you want to follow live feed from down below here is the link i have been watching over the past few days. http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_stream.html
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What most of us see with this latest oil spill, is a failure by man to adequately take precaution against risky endeavor. Mostly a result of apathy and greed. I see this, but I also see another missed opportunity.
When any significant event occurs that directly effects us, affects as well, be it natural catastrophe or man made, there is research to be done on. Research, that, should an event similar in nature occur in the future, we will know how to effectively react and minimize any damage it may cause. What the Deep Horizon Well event shows me, is that we, the US, as a nation and people, do not recognize the importance of information. Or at least, the people in power and those who dole out money do not recognize it. Catastrophe on vast scale is not something that should happen often, and thankfully, it doesn't. Well, it does, but geographically speaking it doesn't. The ability to study how nature responds to any event, and how we respond to it effectively, should be something of a standard when it comes to response. This goes back to the whole mentality of observing and wanting information about the world we live in. This concept had been lost in latter half of the 20th century, and certainly hasn't been resuscitated in the 21st. Only in the past few days was it announced that Oceanographers are just now getting grants to study the direct effects on the effected areas of the Gulf. Yes, we can do some remote imaging and study, but the tolerances for information gathering should be many times greater than what our present efforts put forth. As with any 'major criminal event' that occurs, some level of investigation occurs with certain degrees of scrutiny. Catastrophe should prompt investigation from every sector of response. Research, safety, prevention, recovery, economic sustainability... These are all responses that should become a standard in event response, and to a degree they are, but are often left to the wranglings of Lawyers, and Law-makers to minimize negative feedback. I don't know that what I'm proposing will in any way prevent Catastrophe from happening, but I do now that understanding our world and how we live in it will insure our future here.
The point of the relief well is to relieve pressure on the main well and then seal it safely.
Do you realize what kind of political fallout BP would receive if they were actually wasting time trying to salvage the well?
hey, he had to golf, go on vacation, have some fundraisers, another vacation, ... shit man, you try getting anything done with a schedule like that.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
http://twitpic.com/1rkm7d
in for a penny, in for a pound... I really don't things would be all that much worse tbh
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
Do you realize what kind of political fallout BP would receive if they were actually wasting time trying to salvage the well?
"absolutely none at all?"
Obviously you haven't been paying attention to the masses not paying attention to the media not paying attention to this issues that I consider to be mission-cricital.
My prognostication is that this will be safely forgotten by 95% of the population three weeks after it is "resolved" and the media moves on to the next shiny thing. (Well, except for shrimp lovers and when the next hurricane comes up the gulf...)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
So what's he supposed to have done? All the experts on plugging wells are working in or for the oil industry, the US Government doesn't have anybody better than what BP already has access to. Start ordering BP to do things? BP will simply haul out 8 years of rulings from agencies during the Bush administration saying they don't have the authority to order companies around, and the whole thing'll end up tied up in court for years. Penalize BP for failing to meet regulatory requirements? The Bush administration gutted those regulatory requirements to the point that BP simply hasn't broken any rules here.
I'm sorry, but a year and a half isn't nearly enough to undo 8 years of "Government should get out of business's way and let it do what it does best. We can't regulate it to death, and government shouldn't be telling it what to do.". Although if I were Obama, you can bet that once the well's confirmed capped there would be a request to Congress to add specific regulations covering what went wrong here, plus a request for a 100% increase in the budgets of various regulatory agencies (eg. MSHA, OSHA, MMS) with the additional money earmarked specifically for inspections and enforcement.
I don't see what Kim Jong-il had to do with any of this.
BP posted a link with a "Live" video feed of the belching oil. The running time-stamp on the image was accurate until today, when it seems to be about 2 minutes 24 seconds behind. Anybody else seeing this time delay? Is BP introducing a time delay to bleep out bad words? Since last week, the image typically showed the actual oil exiting a pipe, but ever since the top kill effort began, the image tends to show pretty green pipes and hoses...anything but oil. Has BP shows the previous view since the news reports of partial success? Live video link: http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_stream.html
Actually, I haven't heard a lot of people complaining about CEO pay-rates. What I *have* heard them complaining about is how CEO's and upper-managers gave themselves big bonuses while their companies/etc were going down the toilet.
Part of the issues is that a CEO people should be one of great responsibility, but often it's the CEO's that float away on a "golden parachute" when things go wrong, escaping from legal issues that they were perfectly aware of (or should have been if doing their jobs), or they collect huge "performance bonuses" when there's actually very little performance and the company is going bankrupt...
If a truck driver falls asleep at the wheel, that's one thing. If the truck crashed because the company decides rather consistently to not service its fleet vehicles, or to actively ignore/subvert necessary safety measures on a regular basis, then yeah perhaps it *should* be on him. We need to send a message to the corporate world in general that this sort of crap is no longer acceptable. Perhaps it means establishing that CEO's should definitely *not* be ignoring safety for profit (and can be held accountable for doing so), but at the same time have power to enforce such without getting canned, etc.
No. Sorry. I can't let this one go.
"Dear Leader" is currently gambling on losing his kidnapped Japanese girls, Playstation and VSOP. Starving, murdering, subjugating and indoctrinating millions to satisfy his own bizarre megalomaniac urges.
On one hand, the President of the United States allowed (...and was limited to allowing...) the qualified private sector engineers and managers to fix the problem that they created.
On the other hand, the President coddles the fascist rightists by keeping Guantanamo open, allowing an idiotic "no-fly" list to continue, and continues to delude himself into thinking that Karzai is the partner for conquering Afghanistan. Teabagger corporatists (do you fall into this group...hmm?) blame the President for inaction on the spill, then scream at the idea of increased regulation and oversight.
The President is flawed. BP, TransOcean, and oh...oh yes...Halliburton are at minimum not properly regulated and most likely corrupt. Kim is an insane tyrant.
You, on the gripping hand, are the beacon of logic and liberty.
I was told by one of my old girlfriends who works for Schlumberger (she has her own sources) that this isn't a permanent fix. They are doing a top fill because it is faster than waiting for the relief well to do a bottom fill. This top fill is likely a temporary measure, and they are still going to have to drill a relief well to intercept the main well which is going to take time.
We can only pray that once they cap this, it sticks till they can get the relief well fully drilled.
Well here in the UK petrol/gasoline is 1.20 GBP / litre, there are 3.79 litres to 1 US gallon = 4.55 GBP / gallon, x 1.45 (pounds to dollars) and we're at $6.60 /US gallon in my local gas station, so I don't see $8 / gallon so far off, that's only about another 18% rise.
the profits from the relief well will pay for the cleanup, and then some.
they'll do only as much cleanup as we force them to do, though, so unless the terms are "every fucking molecule scrubbed from the ocean and the beaches" they'll stop spending as soon as they can.
The US needs to basically say "If you have the needed stuff and can give us a plan you get to keep any oil you recover" and then cut the spill area into grid squares and say okay you say you can clean XK gallons so you can use these grid squares and you have these squares ect.
BP of course can buy the oil from the various folks at whatever price or maybe have their own folks scooping up oil.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I've got to wonder, if this does work is BP going to go ahead with their "relief well".
You can bet on it, got to keep up the cash flow.
Just to be safe I think they are going to be drilling a lot of relief wells.
The relief well does not divert the pressure. They can use it to inject mud (which has a density much higher than oil or seawater) into the original bore. As the mud fills the well, the higher density will increase the pressure until it matches the outward pressure of the reservoir.
So 8,000 vertical feet of seawater/oil is not enough to stop the leak, but 8,000 vertical feet of drilling mud that has a much higher density can do the job.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
now we can go on to the next phase of this tragedy: a distracting news story so we forget that this ever happened, hold no one accountable, learn no lesson, and continue doing the same corrupt, stupid shit. drill, baby, drill!
...is start holding these companies responsible in new ways. You spill a barrel of oil? Guess what? You get to "donate" a barrel of oil for free to the US Government.
CEOs "earning" their paycheck. Some of them do, but I'm willing to bet that a lot don't earn their paycheck, or have severely distorted definitions for the word "earn".
:(){
"Cement" is not synonymous with "concrete".
I don't understand why this is so difficult for people to comprehend. Cement is an ingredient of concrete.
Using "cement" and "concrete" interchangeably is like using "flour" and "bread" interchangeably.
This relief well is designed to hit the reservoir and then bullhead it with kill-weight mud. Pressure is not diverted - this is solely a means to destroy the payzone's ability to produce oil. BTW, most wells are "drilled at an angle." It's called directional drilling and has been around for years.
I'm just glad nobody has mentioned nukes yet...
As others have said in this thread, a relief well will not allow continuing operations. It is meant to provide a means for a "Bottom Kill", filling the well with mud and concrete from below, which is much more effective and permanent than the "Top Kill" that they're doing now.
I'll believe it when the brown cloud either slows or better yet stops entirely. They may have replaced the oil with "mud" but something is coming out in a hurry. From what they have said themselves they can't concrete the hole until the pressure stops. Obviously we're a long way off from that. If all they are doing is pumping Mud into the hole to slow the oil, how long can they keep that up if they can't cap it with concrete?
Actually, isn't BP a Belgian company, despite the name?
I honestly wondered what they were doing with a big ass wrench down there. Now I know.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Just watch the live video feed. Looks the same as it did yesterday.
"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
When is the United States Government going to learn that large corporations represent a domestic enemy? They only take from the country, they do not give. This oil spill is the latest example.
Exxon paid ZERO taxes this year, yet accepted millions in subsidies. BP, for this oil spill, will no doubt have to pay a fine, but guess what, it's likely to be less than they already recieve in Federal subsidies, furthermore, if it impacts their bottom line in any way, they'll just scream "bailout", and we'll hand them money -- meanwhile, they gleefully continue to pollute, and I'm sure they pay no taxes either. So the CEO get a bazillion dollars by cutting safety measures, which boosted profit.
I'm surprised airline CEOS haven't caught on to this. You can increase profitability by cutting safety. Forget about servicing planes, that costs money! So what if a few fall out of the sky, and kill people? Hey, as long as the CEO gets paid his bonus! That's all that matters. And when the government asks you to look into the matter, you ask for Federal dollars to do it because you're too poor! And meanwhile you slip money to senators under the table to make sure no commie regulations get put on the industry because that would put Americans out of work!
America has been bought and sold, this country is over. All that's left is for the CEOs to strip mine what's left, take our remaining cash resevres, and scurry away to United Arab Emerates, like Haliburton did.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
In Norway, they require remote actuated valves that can shut off the flow immediately in case of issues like this.
In Canada, they require the simultaneous drilling of a relief well, so it is ready to plug the failed well.
In the US, the regulators approve off-shore drilling operations like this rig without even so much as an environmental review (yes, there was no environmental review for this particular rig-- and four additional since this disaster).
In the US, there are limits on liability of a few 10s of millions to ensure that it is cheaper for the oil company to NOT include any safety features that are not mandated-- they won't be paying for the damage when disaster occurs.
...although it may be some time before we really know if it worked. The reason they waited this long to try this particular method is that there is a chance of things going disastrously wrong. I hope that pressure drops fast.
http://globalwarming.house.gov/spillcam this should make it obvious that the cap isn't working.
http://www.slate.com/id/2254979/
Seems they were responsible for cementing the base of the well and their people were unfortunately part of the accident day.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Doesn't look plugged to me - here's a live feed.
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/ID=1442566327
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
recent tech from germany, many generations technologically removed form the 1960s era tech all of our china syndrome fears are based on
air cooled, passive safety system. there is no failure that can cause an accident, because anything and everything can fail and nothing bad will happen: you can just walk away from a pebble bed reactor, they are foolproof
the only issue is terrorism (not as in bombing the plant, but as in stealing fissile material and placing it in times square), so you need a really good inventory security apparatus
nuclear+electric cars is obviously the solution to our environmental, energy, and geopolitical problems
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm just glad nobody has mentioned nukes yet...
Is there a word for a miniature Streisand effect? Is it like a Knights Who Say Ni effect?
Yeah, well...I bet it'd, like...fall on some birds and make a lot of noise!
(for the record I also support nuclear, but I'll save my jokes for now).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
see the leak on going here in a live feed:
http://socialmediaseo.net/2010/05/26/bp-oil-spill-live-feed-new-live-oil-spill-feed-bypasses-bp-site/
If this had been a shallow well rig the leak would have been stopped weeks ago, but they were forced to drill further off the coast because of environmentalists
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You don't know shit about petroleum engineering.
A relief well is bored through the bore of another well. It's very awkward and anti economical to operate it as a production well - it's going to have a very wide angle (over 5), and so on.
It's not a production well.
It's amazing what can be done, once the government FORCES you to take action instead of continually trying to profit from the situation.
Is that an absolute overall liability, or perhaps they can be hit with the "maximum" for several issues. First, $75m for the leak. $75m per safety issue/protocol ignored. $75m for every beach damaged. $75m for underwater ecoculture. $75m for each person whose livelyhood is gone for the next fifty+ years, etc
Or, just let them pay the max for the leak, and an uncapped amount for the negligence and/or blatant disregard for safety.
...from operation Junk Shot? 'cause that's no operation I want to see.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
What is the media's motivation for lying?
CNN - As BP waited Thursday to determine the success of a risky attempt to cap a well in the Gulf of Mexico, government scientists said that possibly more than twice the oil had spewed than in the Exxon Valdez disaster, making the BP spill the largest in U.S. history.
Notice this is not a direct quote from a scientist. This is a congealed quote made up by CNN or the writer.
There have been numerous oil spills larger in all of the United States history.
One of them was right here in the Gulf of Mexico and it went on leaking for NINE MONTHS in 1979.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill
If they meant largest oil spill inside US boarders, they would have said that. It's clear that is not what they intended to say.
This CEO hired the management team and created the work environment that 1)ignored the damaged rubber BOP seal 2)ignored the failed pressure tests 3)ignored the recommendations of the plugging team 3)sent the plugging team ashore before they could fully complete their work 3)overruled the objections of the drilling team. Somebody needs to go to prison for all that, and it won't be the onsite managers who died. It must be among the living, and the buck stops with the CEO.
I accept that neither the GP nor I know much about petroleum engineering. And also that if it is actually a standard relief well, that your statements are correct.
Unfortunately, BP has earned a reputation for lying and carelessness about side effects. So I don't believe that just because they say it's one thing, that's actually what it is. It's actually even worse that trusting a promise from Microsoft. (Though only because MS software isn't quite as damaging.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
My little calculation using the units calculator at the Linux command line shows that 20 minutes is roughly, within a factor of ten, the endurance of a column of mud when its pumping is halted.
The pumping is now reported to have halted around midnight. It is a stretch for me to imagine that the mudding job is not now mostly undone.
My viewing of the leak video 4 hours later did not encourage me to think that the leak was capped. I thought that I saw light colored natural gas, ruddy brown petroleum, and black petroleum exiting the leaks. Now the only change is that the black substance is not apparent, and the ruddiness is intermittent.
Somebody might want to try to correct this impression, please.
Michael J. Burns
According to MSNBC at a bit after 7:00pm CDT the mud pumping was resumed. The plume in the video now is tricolored, and new cracks in the pipe seem to be present.
Can I deduce that this halt in pumping was authorized by the government? Is there a continuation of a stop gap cover up by the corporation?
Michael J. Burns
You think the only reason oil companies dont drill in shallower waters is NIMBY's worried about their view? You think the very same regulators that caused this mess by rubber stamping everything would give two shits about some assholes view?
Dude. If BP could be drilling in shallow waters, they'd be drilling in shallow waters NIMBY's be damned.
The elephant in the room here is they didn't. Why? Simple--we've tapped out all the oil in cheap & easy to reach locations.
A Relief Well isn't for production. So yes, it's not really something you can question...
But that's the point. They can claim it's purely as a precautionary measure, even though it can potentially provide them with profit and a way to avoid the moratorium on new offshore drills.
Just because they call it a relief well, doesn't mean they won't use it for production or that it's only going to be used to releive that pressure. Besides, what did you think they would do with the oil that comes from the relief well, other than sell it?
Mods are on crack again. Why, how dare you hold a contradictory opinion. Clearly you are trolling!
I hope you have karma to burn like I do, that way these petty irritable little egos accomplish nothing except wasting their points.
For what it's worth, I doubt they'd get much oil (if any) from a relief well. Oil is not what it buys them. It's a face-saving investment that helps to secure their future offshort drilling ventures. Simply put, the more capable they are of containing this disaster the less likely it'll be that they are denied such opportunities to drill in the future. At this point, decent damage control is all they can hope for but that's much better than nothing if they want to continue harvesting such sources of oil.
I guess the above paragraph is more trolling on my part. Mod away.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
It seems to me that success would be indicated by an increasingly accelerating decrease in the flow. Isn't this so?
Maybe they are already injecting junk.
Michael J. Burns
Doesn't seem to be plugged as of just yet.
Live feed from PBS
http://www.youtube.com/pbsnewshour?feature=ticker
That is as of Thursday May 27, 2010 at 11:15PM Eastern
President of the United States of America, the one Barak Hussain Obama, has demonstrated dereliction of duty and is unfit to continure in the capacity of President of the United States of America.
The person Barak Hussain Obama can be regarded as an infiltrator and eneny combatant.
To save the United States of America from destruction, you are now the logical choize.
Lead from the top-down.
Lead from the point of Law.
Lead from the point of Morality.
Lead from the point of Ethics.
Firstly, Lead.
Do not get zelous and try to recurit all the Enlisted Officers in the Army; not enough time for that.
Most importantly, the "stragitic launch codes" must be taken away, or erstwile nullified from usage by the Enemy Combatant Barak Hussain Obama.
Time is short.
Courage, is required.
Justice, will be on your side.
A link found from The Oil Drum: "Top Kill" Has Failed
"wahts woring iwth my tyoping?"
This is just a what if question. I no expertise in Earth science so I hope someone can answer it. What if an equal amount of natural gas leaked from the well instead of oil? How would that affect the waters of the Gulf?
Oil is black. It's a problem.
Niggers are black. They're a problem.
Just do the math, folks.
Drilling fluid and the ocean push against the natural gas and oil. Too heavy and it runs into the well and then the flow reverses in yet another blow out. Too little and the mud is pushed out and we have a blow out.
The process can involve material to clog the formations down hole allowing positive pressure to be maintained.
It appears that sufficient positive pressure can be imposed from the top of the well head to move material like cement down hole and plug the well.
In an ideal world a cement plug is not the first choice. A better situation is one where control of the well is regained and the stack of valves (Christmas tree) repaired. If this stack of valves can be repaired then pressure can be relieved by directing oil and gas to a recovery pipeline. A cement plug can fail as can surrounding rock and the multiple casing making things worse.
The reverse unbalance situation has not been discussed on the media. But if one was able to fill the hole with a "heavy" barite laden fluid it is possible that formations above or below the current oil and gas sources fail and drain down and in all the heavy mud/ fluid. Once this down flow drains and de-pressurizes formations the well fails again perhaps worse than it is now.
Also one of the nasty problems here is a tangle of regulations that prohibit centrifuging and in place incineration of oil recovered from the sea. A smallish flotilla of recovery vessels (skimmers) cannot be deployed because recovery of oil and waste must be tankered away and disposed of "properly".
One obvious place for incineration in place is the top-hat box that was first tried. No one reported on the reality of managing all the oil and gas that that device might have directed to the surface. A flood of warm surface water might have dispersed the methane-hydrates and opened up the pipe (BTW, pipe was too small) to the surface.
The soda straw while it siphoned off and continues to siphon off some oil qualifies as a pressure/ flow sensor. That exercise would have been a critical "sensor" for ongoing efforts.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
There are a handful of reasons to stop pumping none of which mean that the top kill process was stopped.
If the weight of the mud was wrong it needs to be adjusted. And there is a mile of mud above the well head. At approx 18 pounds per square inch per foot of head we are working with massive pressures. One atmosphere of pressure about 15psi is about 30 feet of water so they are pushing thirty times the pressure of the water column at the well head.
A month ago I was watching CCN because they had a bias I liked. Today the screen if full of IDIOTS that are fomenting dissatisfaction. Back to Fox and the New York times.
The sound byte(sic) of the governor saying he might have ten miles of sand berms built had he been given a go ahead. OK that may be so but ten miles out of how many total and possible.
They should be blowing shredded straw and news print then lighting the "wick" on fire. BUT the EPA rules not let those smoky fires get started.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
just about when gasoline hits $10/gallon
which is inevitable as the economies improve, and with brazil, india, china, etc. beginning to consume gasoline like the west and with oil only getting deeper and deeper
it will be amazing how all of the nuanced negatives with reactors will fade away when the rules of economic reality come into play
2015, 2020: "why didn't we build these things awhile ago!"
pffft
mankind seems to be short on foresight
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Goldman Sachs Reveals it Shorted Gulf of Mexico NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) - In what is looming as another public relations predicament for Goldman Sachs, the banking giant admitted today that it made "a substantial financial bet against the Gulf of Mexico" one day before the sinking of an oil rig in that body of water. The new revelations came to light after government investigators turned up new emails from Goldman employee Fabrice "Fabulous Fab" Tourre in which he bragged to a girlfriend that the firm was taking a "big short" position on the Gulf. "One oil rig goes down and we're going to be rolling in dough," Mr. Tourre wrote in one email. "Suck it, fishies and birdies!" The news about Goldman's bet against the Gulf comes on the heels of embarrassing revelations that the firm had taken a short position on Lindsay Lohan's acting career. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/goldman-sachs-reveals-it_b_558774.html ALSO SEE: Criminal Negligence: Despite Knowing It Had a Damaged Blowout Preventer, BP STILL Cut Corners By Removing the Single Most Important Safety Measure - http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/05/despite-knowing-it-had-damaged-blowout.html AND Prominent Oil Industry Insider: "There's Another Leak, Much Bigger, 5 to 6 Miles Away" - http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/05/prominent-oil-industry-insider-theres.html