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BP Says "Top Kill" Operation Has Failed
MrShaggy sends a quote from a CBC story: "BP has scuttled the 'top kill' procedure of shooting heavy drilling mud into its blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after it failed to plug the leak. BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles told reporters on Saturday that over the last three days, the company has pumped more than 30,000 barrels of mud and other materials down the well but has not been able to stop the flow. 'These repeated pumping[s], we don't believe will likely achieve success, so at this point it's time to move to the next option,' Suttles said."
let's try Bottom Seduction.
It's amazing that BP can drill for oil with no provable solution to a catastrophic failure. It's like operating on a patient and going 'Trust me, I'm a doctor'.
I believe the proper tag for this is 'now what'
the good people at larouchepac have compiled nice laundry list of crimes they've committed floating around out there... this is compiled from state and federal testimony.
What would that mean for the environment?
Lets try the same thing again, except with BP senior execs
If BP converted their quarterly profits to coin and dropped a huge sack of nickels on the spill it would stop.
I'd rather they use dollar coins, by way of punishment, but at this point I'll take the nickels.
Okay, plugging the leak is important, but why aren't BP also doing something like this to contain the effect of the leaked oil: use 'empty supertankers to suck the spill off the surface, treat and discharge the contaminated water, and either salvage or destroy the slick.' Instead, they're just rolling out containment booms and sending people out to mop up beaches, never mind trying to initially insist that the crude was red tide, dishwashing-liquid runoff, or mud. Oh wait, the supertanker idea costs a lot of money. Sorry, sorry, my bad.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Okay that should work?
Doug Suttles later stated that BP is hard at work to come up with even cooler names for their next failed attempts to stop the oil leak. When questioned about their competence to do the job, he was quoted saying "we're stuck between overkill and final death."
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
Seems all to be a Déjà-vu : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo
Why don't they start pumping into the well all the bullshit they've been spouting for the last month. That should plug that sucker up real quick.
This is all deja vu. This has occures before. In 1979 a oil well in the gulf blew and it took 9 months to close the gap, using the same techniques they used so far.
So expect repost of failed attempts for the next 9 months.... in the true /. tradition. If it is important it will be posted again. ;)
And so proponents of nuclear energy are seriously considering trusting companies like BP with nuclear power?
Nuts..
I suspect that they always knew their attempts to fix it would fall short, this is all make-busy to give the appearance that everything that could be done is being done. The correct solution appears to be forcing oil companies to drill relief wells for existing exploitation. The idea here is that the relief well is mostly completed so that if a disaster occurs, instead of taking months to connect to the main well, the work can be done within days.
BP's experience is showing us that the relief well is the only solution that will work.
It's why the Canadian government is taking the position that one must be drilled at the same time as a new well is being built. Unsurprisingly, oil companies are already lobbying hard to have these measures curtailed.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-will-take-tough-stand-on-offshore-drilling/article1557095/
"At issue in talks between the oil industry and the National Energy Board on relief wells in the North is whether they must be drilled during the same season as the primary exploration well. The window for drilling in the North is only a few months because of ice conditions. However, allowing oil companies to wait a season to drill relief wells could leave a new well exposed to a potential rupture for a year or more. Mr. Pryce at CAPP said the policy for relief wells was devised in the 1970s, and alternative technology for dealing with ruptures has advanced considerably. "
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
I've come to the conclusion that this is mostly for show.
Best case estimates of success for any of the proposed solutions have been incredibly low.
Repeated failures are changing the problem conditions with each attempt.
BP has to appear to be trying absolutely everything (and I suppose they are), but I think there is an executive acceptance that nothing before the relief wells kick in (August!) is going to make a dent in the flow of escaping oil and gas.
The ROV operators and everyone with a real job to do are doing amazing, admirable work, but I just feel that this is all futile.
We are down to real basic mechanical approaches.
No technological solutions exist, none have been developed as there is no demand, as the oil companies have not invested in disaster management technology. Unproven response measures like the dispersants have been at best useless, and increasingly appear to have had an overall negative effect on the situation.
We seriously don't have any bright ideas about dealing with this, and it's already too late.
"There is nothing nice about Steve Jobs and nothing evil about Bill Gates." - Chuck Peddle
A wonderful example of a cure worse (or at least, with as many potentially unknown effects) as the disease!
Hmm. The problem here is you are asking Brits to fix a leaking pipe. Queue lots of sucking of teeth, scratching of heads and HUGE estimates. There is probably a guy there right now, using the undersea robot to tap the pipe and go, "well your problem, mate, is its all your own fault see, no offence, I've got a bit of twig I broke off a tree in my van. I'll stick that in the hole and wiggle it around while I think of something more plausible but it will cost you..." Call in the Poles. They have great plumbers: quick, efficient, well qualified. They'll have it fixed in a jiffy and clean up the mess afterwards.
... because your BP shares are going to be worth a lot less ;-)
Seriously though this accident has thrown up a lot of interesting information - such as how the US imports vastly more oil than it produces on its own territories, and I can only imagine regulation around oil drilling will become more strict rather than less after this has all been sorted out. Given that the USA does love to consume energy I would have thought that the silver lining might be increased investment in alternative energy sources; you've got a huge country with a lot of space for generating wind/solar/wave power. Now might be a time to explore more than pilot projects? Possibly an increased nuclear power plant program as well though I am not too sure about whether this is in political favour at the moment?
One thing amazes me about the present fiasco is that we don't hear of more accidents like this, how many offshore oilrigs are there round the world? I guess the oil industry is either pretty careful or pretty lucky when it comes to oil extraction (or good on PR cover-ups...)
The only thing this operation managed to properly pump is the term "top kill".
"Mud" is a technical term for all sorts of drilling fluids specifically designed to keep the pressure on an oil well.
In this case, they used a special type of "Mud", even, "Kill Mud".
But it still failed (and the failure has quite possibly damaged the Blowout Preventer atop the borehole further, potentially increasing the amount of oil gushing into the ocean.
Obligatory link: http://twitter.com/BPGlobalPR
Firstly this is not the same domain of competence and risk, to drill an oil well thousand of feet deep, and to maintain a nuclear plant. Secondly nobody is trusting BP with a nuclear plant, but trusting other company. Finally there are many nuclear plant world wide maintained in a satisfactory state, and only a few major incident, none in the last 20 years with the latest design. There isn't many bulk way to generate energy for a baseline and/or peak electricity generation, fission, coal, gas, oil. Note on how 3 of those release carbon in the atmosphere which was trapped for a long time. Without going into global warming debate, nuclear plant are today the only baseline/peak generation which avoid that. Other generation method do exists, but the possibility are either exhausted (hydroelectric) are not compatible with baseline generation (wind, solar for example).
So carbon or nuclear, by govt or by private, TAKE YOUR POISON. The only real alternative is to go back to a pre-modern society.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Here's an idea for how to really motivate BP - and any other company with the potential to cause such massive havoc...
For every day that the oil continues to gush, the top 10% of their employees, by total compensation, should be required to work for a day on the clean-up crews. Not simply going to meetings and coming up with plans - they are to get down and dirty scraping oil off rocks and washing birds. The kind of work that gets oil under your fingernails and in your hair, with the smell soaked so deeply into your skin that it takes weeks to get it out.
After all, these guys have so much money in the bank that firing them won't hurt, and fining the company will just translate into higher oil prices. If they had some real skin in the game, I think we would have seen them take the problem a whole lot more seriously from day one.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
well you can sell the Americans anything if you give it macho BS military stylee language. They get all excited if you use words like "kill". Throw in a cowboy metaphor and you're away. Expect the next solution to be something like "predator total destruction high plains stealth option" or something similar ;-)
They all leak oil. What they need is to get some Japanese automotive engineers to show them how to really seal that thing up.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
No, really. If Rachel Maddow is right this has happened before and continues to happen in the same way. All same players, all same tactics, all same outcomes.
Kinda WTF, but check this out:
http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/c8sqn/rachel_maddow_finds_one_massive_wtf/
1. It's not just BP - the other oil companies are doing exactly the same thing. It's just that BP drew the short straw today.
2. We do tons of things with no provable solution to a catastrophic failer. Do you want the short list or the long?
I have another idea for an operation with a name 'Top Kill'.
Here are the details.
You can't handle the truth.
are they pursuing the only thing sure to work, which is drilling at a tactically chosen spot of the same oil field to relieve or nullify the pressure at the leak?
Or are they really going through all options sequentially, with the least costly and fastest solutions first.
For every barrel of mud pushed down that equals one less barrel of oil spewing out of the pipe. They need to keep pumping mud until another solution is in play. If it takes a full tanker of mud every day then so be it.
Maybe those russians should take a second look at it...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
/faceplam
The new BP is just a rebrand after the BP + AMOCO (ie. AMerican Oil COmpany) merger.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
How much oil is down there? If we can't stop it, just how much oil is going to come out of that hole? Does anyone even know?
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Rumour? It's well documented the Russians did it. Several times too.
Wait, I heard about this. It's called Reaganomics. But maybe the kids have a new name for it these days, what do I know?
I am not an economist, not really; but I think it goes something like this: Smaller government is good, and the free sector can best self-regulate, and grow. As a result, great wealth is possible to accumulate, and it will naturally be dispersed across the community, and economy.
And that is exactly what we have here. A very large, profitable, and dare I say efficient company, well except in safety perhaps. But they are very profitable for their shareholders, and the wealth grows and gets passed around.
Oh dear, I hope this will not be misconstrued as an argument for wealth-distribution, when I really want is more regulation and accountability. And penalties imposed by the government, not penalties imposed by BP on the environment and everything pertaining to it. Big Polluters (BP) should PAY, and if they went under and the cost of energy rose, I see that as a good thing.
Another name for Reaganomics was the 'trickle-down' theory. Of course that's a slight misnomer, because it is difficult to get that stuff back down there at all, but I digress.
As a result of BP's growth and success over the years, now wealth is being transferred to a new, emerging sector of the economy, and thousands of smaller entrepeneurs engage in the clean up effort, lawsuits, etc. As a result of BP's largess, new smaller oil collection and recycling companies will grow; (nevermind they used to shrimp).
Just put your trust in the markets. Free-market economics can overcome civilization, because its more powerful.
Personally, if it means the price of oil is increased, I say OK, because then people will then use less.
[some things I wrote in sarcasm folks]
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
I believe the next step is look for the 'PANIC' button and wait for the "super hero in your region" :)... well that's what seems to work in some movies :)
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Don't worry, according to the Peak Oil theory, the oil should run out soon...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
So the question becomes: how much extra on a gallon are you prepared to pay for this extra safety factor?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
But consumer choice is necessarily impacted by price and availability. When oil prices get high, consumption does drop, its happened several times before, and consumers get used to the changes. Its just when energy is cheap and conveniently available everywhere, its naturally leads to greater consumption. That roadtrip for the weekend instead of just staying at home or running a home server instead of just using an external drive seem like nicer options in a cheap market.
Energy IS cheap and available largely because lobbyists for the industry, often against popular opinion and the opinion of the consumers themselves, have rigged laws and regulations in their favor and against regulation and accountability. In a universe where this oil well didn't exist or the oil it produced was significantly more expensive because of safety measures, it is very likely consumers would have cared, at least much, as people would have just gotten used to such a world. The only parties that WOULD care are the oil companies who would see lower revenues and profits, and the government who would see less tax revenues from those profits. And so they work to rig the system to make consumers choose to consume more, not the other way around, which is why leaving the choice to consumers [alone] will never work.
Sounds like you've made the obvious error of believing that (what was once, but is no more) the company name had a meaning. Just like you can't get Chicken Tikka in a branch of Currys, or rent a radio from Radio Rentals. Forget it. BP is just as american as British Aerospace, Exxon, United Airlines and all the rest.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The Russians have done it 5 times and it's worked 4 of those times. It was posted on slashdot a week or so ago, go read it. You're a moron for assuming it's a rumor without doing any checking.
That said, OP is a dumbass too. The conditions in former soviet waters are possibly quite different from these waters and the nuke isn't an infallible solution with no ill effects. It's a nuclear bomb, there's obviously some dangers.
However, what IS disturbing is that the nuke option is being dismissed out of hand. It has a track record of some real success, this indicates that's is not some crackpot theory that someone drempt up while high on meth. It's a valid option that deserves consideration.
Every option has risks. Nukes, top kill, and anything else BP or anyone else will present. These options need to be considered and judged. But here's the issue, this is an ENGINEERING problem. We need ENGINEERS to stop this oil leak. It's being handled by politicians, lobbyists, and the business and accounting majors at BP. Not a real surprise that nothing is getting done.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I think the post above was referring to the fact that you and abigsmurf haven't actually provided evidence, you have made assertions. Do you have links which indicate that the Russians did this and succeeded? Other evidence that validates those claims outside of the USSR?
Not as deeply submerged, and just in strong rock.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
What's worse about it? Just your irrational fear of all things nuclear?
Known to work 80% of the time, on above ground wells. And you and I have no idea if the geology surrounding this well is at all similar to the geology around the Russian wells.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The russians have used specialized nuclear explosions to seal gas field leaks. Oil fires, on land. Not underwater.
I suspect it's still an option, and a quick google search shows that Obama has had his folks looking in to it since mid May to see if such an option would be viable under thousands of feet of water.
This isnt just a hole filled with oil, there's also a crapton of methane ice and other wonderfully combustible things down there. Nuking it might just make things worse by blowing the top off completely and letting it all out in one big splort.
And that's without considering the ramifications of setting of a NUCLEAR GODDAMN BOMB right off of some of the most densely inhabited coasts on the continent.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Sure, "top kill" and "top hats" have risks. However, a caldera is not an associated risk, as it would be with a nuclear weapon. I dismiss cures with extinction as a side effect as well.
It might also be possible to do it using a bomb or bombs with conventional explosives. The biggest current US conventional explosive bombs might be as effective as some smaller nukes. It's not implausible that they're as effective as the nukes Soviets used in the
'60s and '70s oil leak bombings.
That'd probably make the nuke-worried people a bit less worried. Although the thing to realize is that, really, the contamination from that nuclear explosion would still be orders of magnitude less than what the oil spill will cause if it's left untreated for much longer. So, if it calls for a nuke, then nuke it should be.
Funny how there's a bunch of SF movies where we use nukes to avert a catastrophe, although it's almost exclusively of the "asteroid will hit Earth" variety. Well, here we have a different scenario on our hands, and it's real, and it needs to be solved soon.
Sig erased via substitution of an identical one.
What kind of checking did YOU do ? Posted on slashdot, read from some blog, or seen on the interwebs is not fact checking.
Perhaps we should start with some of our enormous conventional bombs before going nuclear?
If all that's needed is an intense explosion to collapse the surrounding seafloor I see no reason something like a MOAB with no radiological repercussions couldn't work. Hell, anything's better than a 4" tube trying to suck it all up as it comes out.
Why haven't we tried getting some of the enormous dredges used in the middle east at the moment to build private islands for the rich? We could have them suck up a boatload of silt from somewhere like the Mississippi delta and dump it in a concise pile on top of the spill. We could feasibly do this repeatedly until an island forms over the riser. If that's not enough to stop the oil, I don't know that anything would be.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Nuke it from orbit already!
Linux forever
"Mud" is a technical term for all sorts of drilling fluids specifically designed to keep the pressure on an oil well.
In this case, they used a special type of "Mud", even, "Kill Mud".
Specifically it's an engineered fluid of precise, high density. It is dense enough to float most rock.
IIRC, it's injected down the space inside the drill pipe, then makes a u-turn after exiting at the drill face and flushes the drilled rock particles up between the drill pipe and the bore wall, thereby clearing the "drilled chips" out of the way.
For an excellent treatment of drilling technique, see "A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea: The Story of the Mohole Project" http://www.amazon.com/Hole-Bottom-Sea-Mohole-Project/dp/B000NPVA56/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275221670&sr=1-3 by Willard Bascom. He was director of the project some 50 years ago.
One example: To get an idea of the scale of a drill pipe, imagine a circular stairwell in a tall building with a marble first floor. Hang out over the railing from a few stories up. Grasp the end of a piece of piano wire that reaches to the marble floor. Now spin the wire with your fingers. It must reach the floor. It must also bear against the floor just hard enough that the properly-shaped tip of the wire can drill into the marble. You must not let the tip bear too hard against the marble or the wire above the tip will bend sideways and collapse out of vertical, making it unable to continue drilling. Easy.
Also explains how the actual bore need not be vertical, but can be bent off to the side. This was part of the justification Iraq used for invading Kuwait before Gulf I. The Iraqis claimed that the Kuwaitis were drilling wells near their mutual border, but curving the bores sideways into pools which were actually vertically under Iraqi territory.
Lost in all the discussion is that, according to one account I heard, the bore starts on the seabed some 5K feet down, but the end of the drill was already an additional 13K feet below that level. Expensive crap to lose.
Really. It was just a joke! Guys, OK? Guys? Guys! Hey. Hey! HEY! Whaddya doing with that missile? GUYS!!!!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
When I saw that figure, I was nearly sure it came out of some VP's ass and had nothing to do with engineering. I wouldn't be surprised if the engineers quoted "5%", but then management decided that if it was too low they'd be asked to work on something more credible. And of course if it was too high (e.g. 95%), then they'd look bad if it failed. 70% is about the highest probability that you're not surprised to see failing.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
...forgiving the deaths of their addict-friends due to a bad batch of heroin, since they won't do anything to jeopardise their own supply. Ban offshore drilling. Oil will cost more, but the cost of not doing so is far dearer.
This has happened before. June, 1979 to be exact.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZjMP8YdNbg
I don't know if this is evidence of one of the endless time-loops running all around and through us all the time which nobody seems to notice, or just a lot of retarded people running on automatic programming playing their roles, but this is nearly an exact replay of an event which happened thirty-one years ago.
-FL
That's a better chance than any of the methods tried so far were given. Top Kill was 70% at best according to BP before they tried it.
A Nuke will eat up any oxygen for those materials to combust. One of the most successfull examples of a nuke being used was to put an uncontrolled gas fire that had been burning for 6 months
Live BP under water oil spill video link;
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_stream.html
And how much risk is there that it will make things worse?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I figure about Dec 2012 is the right amount of time it will take for this thing to kill off all the oceans. Is this the beginning of the end of the world? kidding but hey, think about it...
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
One article said that the oil flow stopped while they were pumping in the mud. Why not continue the pumping operation with seawater to keep the pressure in the BOP as high as possible?
They've all been viable solutions so far with what was thought to be a real chance of success. Ultimately most of the solutions were impossible to test beforehand.
http://http//wimp.com/oilspills/
Nuclear wessels!
It sounds like you're suggesting that for every deep-water oil rig that's built, the oil companies should build a spare "just in case" and have it start the drilling operation to get a lead in case there's a problem on the production platform.
And what's wrong with that? It's not going to double the cost. There's lots of other costs. Also, biodiesel can be produced right now, profitably, as the USDOE projected at Sandia NREL in the 1980s. Or in other words, that fuel could have come from algae in the desert, but because of greed, it must be pumped from the bottom of the ocean instead. I reject the notion that offshore oil drilling is even necessary, and thus I have no problem with mandating that it be done sensibly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
To elaborate a bit - water based muds like used there usually contain clay minerals, mostly bentonite, to adjust their rheological properties, and barite, which has a high density, to reach the desired mud weight. Apart from that, there's basically nothing which has not been included in various drilling muds.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I do not get it. Oil and natural gas are lighter than water and rise up to surface. Why not to build a giant steel cone and lower it on the oil well?
Not a pathetic white box, which BP built by 2 welders, but a well engineered industrial device.
Louisiana is being destroyed in real. Why the US government could not build this giant cone itself? It is also partly to blame as its inspectors were accepting bribes. So it is not only BP's fault.
This cone would cost less that an aircraft carrier. They had to start welding it a month ago.
It really looks like the other "Solutions" like the tophat, topkill etc, were just politics.
Doing something (largely for the sake of appearenc) to quell the angry mob, while they tackle what actually works but will take time: Relief wells.
So how many months until the relief wells are ready?
The problem would be that if the United States - the self-appointed benchmark of responsible nuclear weapon policy - demonstrated a peaceful use for nuclear detonations, it would punch a major hole in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which supports non-proliferation of nuclear weapons AND the right to peacefully use nuclear technology. You'd have North Korea arguing it wants to use nuclear detonations for excavation, that sort of thing.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Electricity is NOT oil powered.
ALL USA power corps get huge massive government welfare that has historically been many times larger than alternatives. It has not been a fair playing field, where alternatives must not only compete with the collection of free energy (created by nature over millions of years) but ALSO the government subsidies and they need much more R&D being literally 100+ years behind the conventional fuel R&D.
Part of the problem is that it is difficult to monetize the additional costs of poor fuel choices and too many shallow and selfish Americans (which in the last few generations is practically our defining trait) do not care and elect people who easily fool them by thinly veiled tax games (and wars, and 3rd world exploitation) to keep costs down.
GOVERNMENT reflects the populace. That is how it works. When you bash American government, you bash the American people who are totally responsible for it. I find that most miss this reality because its a product of masses of people and not doing what they personally want all the time -- eg; this is an example of the shallow minded lack of thought that goes on. The culture encourages this dysfunction which means it will spiral downward to some floor which will likely heavily be influenced by the effectiveness of the media to report to the people what is being done in their name.
The MOB BOSS who makes vague orders and doesn't want to know how they are implemented but harshly judges those who do not deliver is a lot like how a representative democracy works! Public corp CEOs function similarly-- increase share price but don't get caught and don't tell us!
CANADA requires a relief well be drilled AT THE SAME TIME. Their people still have a functioning government. I expected naive Americans to be upset when Obama didn't quietly clean up all their messes yesterday; he is not the naive one, the populace is. Furthermore, its like people thought he was a dictator superman (the super hero thing even became a cynical joke;) forgetting only the corrupt have "power" because they are going WITH the flow of the current system. A true reformer has little power and arguably can only go 1 step forward and 2 backward in our collective fubar.
Welcome to reality. I'll think there is hope when I'm not modded down for speaking unpleasant truths.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
what i dont understand is even if topkill doesn't work, which it didn't, why not keep it going until the next method is ready. wouldnt you rather have 19,000 barrels of mud coming out instead of oil? the next capping solution won't be ready for 5-7 days, thats 100,000 barrels of oil!
1. Dig up a mountain
2. Carry rocks and sand to coast and load up on ships
3. Dump all that on the leak
4. No profit, only a closed leak.
A better way of stating it would be: "The Soviet Union, a secretive dictatorship whose track record for telling the truth was even lower than BPs, used the Nuclear option five times. Of these, one time is known to have resulted in an even bigger environmental catastrophe than the original, while the exact results of the other remains largely unknown."
If the Nuclear option was likely to work and unlikely to result in decades of radioactive oil pumping into the sea, I think the powers that be would be seriously considering it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Because those bombs use a fuel/air mixture which is misted in the area micro-seconds before the charge that ignites them. sort of hard to spray a mist of fuel and air when you are waaaaaay under water.
Did "top kill" at least slow the leak?
... was supposed to be a 'junk shot' where they jamb the BOP with plastic and rubber to keep the mud from squirting out. So when is BP going to whip out its junk and shove it in the hole?
Have gnu, will travel.
Here's what happened then: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo
Everything going on now is essentially theatre.
Did they try duct tape already?
You aren't going to have to shut off your heating and electrical devices to reduce your consumption of energy. It will take years to happen, and it will begin with you making accumulating changes to what you buy and how you use energy. Eventually when your current car wears out, you will buy a new one. Instead of buying a Tahoe, you will buy the most efficient car that suits your needs. Eventually you will save up enough money to insulate your home more effectively. When your washing machine wears out you will choose to buy one with an extremely fast spin cycle, so that the dryer requires less energy. Perhaps when you sell your house next, you will choose to buy a home closer to were you work, perhaps something smaller, and maybe even a condo. And voila, you have reduced your energy consumption by 50% over ten to twenty years.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I'm reminded of President John F. Kennedy - Man On the Moon Address almost 50 years ago. I'm still waiting for a President to do a "stop our dependency on oil" speech. Not unlike what we did with the atomic bomb.
An all out National effort bringing together the brightest minds our great country has to offer. Lock them away with no limits on budget or cost. Perfect either Solar, Hydrogen, wind, all of the above or whatever and solve this country's energy "crisis" that we've been in my entire life. We put a man on the moon, we built an Atomic Bomb from what was just theory. We can figure out and implement a clean 100% renewable abundant energy source.
Wait a minute. Why am I telling ya'll this... I'm going to cut/paste this in a message to the White House.
-[d]-
So you think that 80% successful at something completely different is better than 70% projected success rate on what we are actually talking about?
I can beat my son 90% of the time at 5 card stud poker, the best poker players in the world win about 20-30% of their hands when playing at a full table. So, by your logic, I should move to Vegas so they will pay me to NOT play poker because I am so much better than anyone else at it.
Chris Mathews dropped his hardball this week when he let a petroleum academic explain that worries about the casing were restraining the use of the mud and pumps. The obvious point is that the casing is deficient by design if it can not tolerate a top kill operation.
Michael J. Burns
Let's not forget that BP convinced CIA to remove Iran's democratically-elected leader and replaced him with a western friendly king.
"predator total destruction high plains stealth option-X"
Excuse me, sir. Whatever you're selling there I'd like a dozen, please.
Are the only two options 1) to continue as we are and 2) go back to horse-drawn buggies?
Thought not.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We're looking for solutions that'll work in practice under a great depth of water, not ones that work in theory under a great amount of alcohol.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No shit, Sherlock.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Instead of trying to plug it why don't you just send thousands of boats to start harvesting the leaking oil.
If they send enough boats then they should be able to clean faster than it leaks, right? Hence cleaning up the spill, and simultaneously getting useful oil. At the very least, it will limit the amount of oil that pollutes the environment in comparison to standing around like a bunch of idiots scratching our heads.
Action, people!
the problem is that there are quite a few dutch firms who know how to handle deep sea operations like this, but BP doesn't want to admit that they aren't able to handle the problem their selves
-- Robokop
So far as I know, Soviets never nuked an underwater oil well. All documented cases were using nukes on land to seal leaking gas wells.
You mean Operation Mexican Sombrero?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo
"You know, in certain older civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords..." - "The Operative"
The really disgusting thing IMO is that major governments haven't done much more than hold blame game hearings. This is really a pretty major problem and we haven't brought the full power of even the US to bear on the problem. We can send a man to the moon but not cap a damn well? There isn't a scientist or engineer in the entire country with an idea of how to fix this? Instead of pointing fingers and posturing we should be pulling in all possible suggestions, evaluating them in order of safety and likelihood to work, and trying them one by one. While one is being tried be getting the next effort ready.
And for gawd sakes when we fix it then invest R&D in undersea construction and living. That is what basic research is good for - coming up with results to problems you didn't know you'd have.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
+2. Where are the mod points when you need 'em?
Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert A. Heinlein
These are not 20 megaton "cobalt" planet busters. The Russians used very small bombs, just enough to do the job, around 20-30 kilotons. The Heroshima bomb was about 19 kilotons, for comparison. The bomb is detonated ABOVE the wellhead. The force shatters the surrounding rock and plugs the leak.
Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Sure, "top kill" and "top hats" have risks. However, a caldera is not an associated risk, as it would be with a nuclear weapon. I dismiss cures with extinction as a side effect as well.
Are you serious? Do you know nothing of physics? You should if you are on Slashdot. It would take a 20 megaton hydrogen bomb to create a "caldera", and even if it did, with the thousands of atmospheres of pressure and icy cold temperatures a mile down, it would "freeze" the magma instantly.
Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert A. Heinlein
In the earlier discussion on Slashdot a couple of weeks back the MOAB option was discussed (and dismissed) for very simple reason. The MOAB if a fuel bomb, and as such needs oxygen to work.
Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert A. Heinlein
In fact, the one failure resulted in the situation being no worse than it was. As for the "powers that be", they know many voters would have issue with it. For all the wrong reasons. But there is no reason to tell anybody until it is tried. The results would only be seen by people with a few miles of the site. A big upwelling of water, like the old depth charges of WWII only MUCH bigger. During the 1960's the USA and other nations conducted underwater tests with HUGE bombs, to no ill effects. The radiation is absorbed.
Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If you look at what has happened so far you will notice one thing. Up until they tried top kill BP has not take a single action that would put the well out of production. Every thing they have tried has had the goal of putting that well back in to production. When the last one failed they proposed an approach that requires them to cut the top of the control structure, an act that has a possibility of *increasing* the rate that oil is leaking. So, first they attempt a top kill and a junk shot that, of course, fails. Now, they have "no choice" but to try this risky technique. This risky technique which is designed to put the well back into production. And, oh yeah, it might still leak. But, they'll be getting the oil so what do they care? They have never been focused on stopping the leak. They have always been focused on getting the well back in production.
Have you noticed how many complaints there have been from the folks on the gulf about the lack skimmers operating? Where are they? They all seem to be under contract to BP. CNN reported yesterday that a whole fleet were sitting doing nothing until an official of homeland security tracked them down and forced them to start skimming. Why is that? The reason is simple. Every barrel of oil they skim up is evidence that can be used against BP in court. Why did they lie about the size of the spill in the first place? Because anything they say about the size of the leak is an admission that could be used against them in court. Why did I see a BP representative, again on CNN, state that the pipe was 5 inches in diameter when it is 22 inches in diameter? The list goes on and on an on...
Why, because BP is worried about leaving evidence that can be used in court. They are not worried about cleaning up the spill or even limiting the damage. They are interested in reducing the amount of evidence that can be used against them in court and getting the well back into operation. Killing the place that produces 80% of the seafood consumed in the US does not matter to them killing the ecology of the entire gulf does not mater to them. When the oil starts to wash up on their private beaches in the UK and Europe, you can bet there will be plenty of skimmers working. There will be no shortage of booms to block the oil. They care no more for us than their ancestors cared about the people in the the Americas, Asia, or Africa.
Who are these people? The people running BP are the same British Aristocracy that raped India, introduced opium to China, started slavery in North America, and created the "troubles" in Ireland. These are the same people who we Americans revolted against. They are the same kind of people that the French were smart enough to feed to Dr. Guillotine's machine. These are people who for hundreds of generations have believed that they had the right to enslave other people and use them any way they choose. Are they hereditary sociopaths? Or, are they just raised to believe in their own superiority? I do not know. I do know that any aristocracy is institutionalized injustice.
Now, through what is recognized as a huge mistake in the 14th amendment these aristocrats are able to hide behind the facade of a a corporation to hide from justice. Corporations were never intended to have the right to due process, or the right to freedom of speech, or the protection of the 4th and 5th amendments. Those are *human* rights. They are the rights of natural persons. Corporations are not supposed to have those rights. People have them. People can be held responsible for criminal actions by sending them to jail, or even (I live in Texas) by execution. But, no matter what a corporation does they can only be forced to pay a fine. You can't imprison a corporation. You can't execute a corporation. And, corporations have enormous amounts of money to spend on their own defence. Huge amounts of money to spend on lobbying. But, a corporation can not make a decision. People who run corporations make the decisions. If they decide to commit a crime their corporation pays a fine
"Existing alternatives to oil"? I think many people underestimate the energy density, EROEI, portability, reliability, and current applications of fossil fuels, and overestimate the ability of known alternatives to take their place. Energy aside, paint and plastics alone cover the very fabric of our way of life. Make no mistake, we still need SEVERAL miracles to even begin to transition to another source. We live every day on discoveries that a hundred years ago would seem like miracles. So they are possible, but right now, we're nowhere close on this.
If Dubai can dredge up enough earth to create artificial islands, why we can't we simply bury the leak?
nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be sure...