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BP Robot Seriously Hampers Oil Spill Containment
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes
"A high-tech effort by BP to slow the oil gushing from its ruptured well head led to a large accident yesterday that forced the company to remove a vital containment cap for 10 hours. Robots, known as remote operated vehicles, were performing multiple operations at the disaster site when one bumped into the 'top hat' cap and damaged one of the vents that removes excess fluid, according to the US Coast Guard. The robots weigh around four tons, and are controlled from vessels on the surface using advanced IT systems with both manual and automated functions. BP removed the cap for nearly 10 hours ... in order to assess it after a discharge of liquids was noted from a key valve. The cap's removal left the oil gushing out of the wellhead, largely uninterrupted. Admiral Thad Allen, US National Incident Commander for the response, told the media that part of the problem was the number of robots conducting simultaneous operations at an immense depth. A dozen robots are circulating the wellhead."
Another factor that may hinder containment even more is the increasing potential for tropical storms in that area of the Gulf.
No soup for you.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Welcome our new robot underlords.
... and then they built the supercollider.
It's time to get the pros in to finally take care of this mess. Might I suggest the Keystone Cops?
So the well is alive now and needs to have a platoon of 4-ton robotic pacemakers?
After that the top hat was the first post.
Get BP out of the equation NOW. Is it not obvious that they cannot handle the situation at all? Unless BP pays a disinterested third party (and I hate to say this, but one picked by the government) to get this capped permanently, we will never see an end to this "cleanup" operation.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
..covering the south. This ought to be worth watching. Earth just might clean itself up yet just as these companies are hoping.
BP and the government are responsible for an enormous coverup. The entire population of the Gulf Coast is sick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkYJDI8pK9Y
We have to seize BP.
This disaster is horrible, but on the other hand we have several 4 ton robots circling a well a mile beneath the water.
Humans are awesome.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I use /. almost as much as I use your momma... get over it.
And you all can kiss its oily metal ass!
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Admiral Thad Allen, US National Incident Commander for the response, told the media that part of the problem was the number of robots conducting simultaneous operations at an immense depth. A dozen robots are circulating the wellhead.
The operators got bored, and decided to play a few rounds of Robot Wars . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Hm. 1+ mile underwater welding. That sounds ... um, rather difficult.
They had a hard enough time dropping a giant cap and not having it pop off due to the pressure...
What was that robot thinking?
Clearly this idea was rejected because it is far too simple.
Very few things are easy when you're 5000 feet below sea level and dealing with pressures of 2k psi.
Then that must be "it"?
If there is a dozen ROV's around the well, why are they only releasing the feeds from 8 of them.... They should release the rest of them.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Underwater welding happens all the time. And if it were a problem, you could use clamps to hold it or drill holes and bolt everything together or both...
They need to drop a large (like circus tent sized) funnel over the well head, and have a long wide tube leading up to the surface from there. The oil would rise through the tube, and because it is wide (say 5 metres) it wouldn't get clogged by those methane crystals.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I thought pouring oil on troubled waters was supposed to calm them!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
When a tropical storm or hurricane eventually goes through the Gulf of Mexico and through this oil spill, is it possible for the storm to pick up the oil and dump it hundreds or even thousands of miles away as it makes its way across land?
"kindness"??
But... to do that, you'd have to be using /. and his momma at the same time... you perv!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And then the pressure builds up behind the top of the wellhead, forcing oil through the porous sandstone compromising the integrity of the sea bed possibly causing a complete rupture of the ocean floor leading to the entire contents of the oil deposit rushing into the gulf. There's a reason they quit trying to top kill it. There's a reason they removed the broken pipe at the wellhead allowing more oil to flow into the gulf. This is bad, but the alternative is far worse.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You have two problems at work here: you have to do this under a shitton of water, and you are trying to cap a pipe with a shitton of pressure behind it. If it were as simple as "simply clamping/bolting a cap on it", then I suspect it would be done by now.
Or hey, maybe I'm wrong and you should be busy sending your resume to BP right away instead of posting on slashdot. ;)
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Give the guy some slack...maybe it's the only way he could do the GP's momma without throwing up in his mouth.
Living With a Nerd
So what... When they removed the cap 100,000 barrels a day leaking instead of 75,000? (assuming they are still capturing around 25,000/day)
What difference does that make?! It was still leaking like crazy even with the cap in place.
I don't see what the big deal is other than the robot smashing some stuff. It made absolutely minuscule difference in the amount of cleanup that's going to need to be done.
Those two points are precisely my point. hehe.
Would using a slightly larger pipe to slide down over the existing stuff, then running it all the way to the surface for collection be of any benefit? It wouldn't even have to be sealed to the existing hardware, just rammed down into the sea floor. If it leaks as much as 20% you've still contained 80% of the flow.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I know that BP has a worse safety record than other drillers, but that doesn't mean their ROV operators are less skilled. I'd like to see you (or anyone else) pull something like this off without making at least a couple mistakes.
Maybe if BP drilled for vinegar, and just let all that flow out as well . . . they could turn the whole disaster into a tasty salad dressing?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
BP is complete fail...like this is going to be something that will be forever flaunted in the face of any politician brassy enough to imply a self regulated industry as innocuous as even a q-tip packager is a sane idea.
ive heard everything from "bp is censoring the media" to "bp is burning sea turtles alive" and now "bp is smashing robots into the
well cap." BP has tried FIVE TIMES to contain this spill for over two months now. every wild fancy from broken golfballs and rope to heavy mud and cement has been thrown at this thing and nothing BP "engineers" can come up with seems to be imaginative enough to stop this fucking leak.
in another six months the gulf coast will not only have to contend with the fallout from its annual bevy of hurricanes, but the inevitable complexities coastal crude oil fires pose as municipalities will be forced to extinguish flaming transformers and ruptured gas lines tainted with this shit. ground water table pollution is also a consideration after the hurricane season.
Good people go to bed earlier.
They have been proceeding cautiously to avoid making the situation worse. Their next step is to remove the pipe at the flange above the BOP and bolt a new pipe in-place, but they're been waiting to see if that will be necessary first. I don't think welding anything is a good idea at this point.
The problem is pressure. There isn't a pumpjack on the sea floor using suction to draw the petroleum out of the well. It is coming out by itself, and under very high pressure.
You could weld a valve onto the top, but if you try to close it, the pressure will seek relief elsewhere. If you get really, really lucky, it just blows out the weld and rejects the valve. Much more likely, however, it would split the pipe under the sea floor where we don't have access. The only hope of capturing anything is if the breech remains above the surface.
One day in July or August BP will suddenly get shit under control and the leak will stop over night. That will be the day the two relief wells come online and provide means to reduce the well pressure. BP started drilling these relief wells in April, and they take a few months to come online. Everything else is window dressing.
See that "Preview" button?
Now, it couldn't.
The hubris you must have...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
haul in lots and lots of huge car sized boulders, i mean hundreds of thousands of them,and pile huge boulders on the well site and after a layer of boulders is on it start piling smaller rock aggregate from basketball size to baseball & golf ball size. then start pouring on concrete or cement or maybe clay & sand, eventually they will seal it off, but it wont be a small task it will take a hell of a lot of boulders & rock and cement and/or clay & sand,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
They have been proceeding cautiously to avoid making the situation worse.
Worse? I think that word needs qualifying, in this context. They were making sure not to drill a second, larger hole directly beside it? They were refraining from dumping heavy water into it? Ma and Pa's Tackle 'n' Bait would have done a better job at containing this by now.
I like how this is all a robot's fault. As if these dozen robots are all flying around the busted well using an AI from the future to do work autonomously.
How about we tell it like it is. Some dude/dudette piloting an underwater submersible accidentally bumped into the well and did damage, and that damage required uncapping the well to fix.
More incompetence from the folks at BP. Nice spin job though.
Disclaimer: I harbor no hostility towards the pilot. It's BP who continuously makes bad decisions about how to handle a situation (such as putting too many bots in the water, or having them piloted by people not skilled enough to handle the situation) and the covers it up by blaming something else.
Sheesh.
Kindra Arnesen
BP is a band of complete villains. Putting these psychopaths in charge of the cleanup is like putting the same cast of characters who crashed the economy back in charge of the economy. Fuck these guys.
-FL
Every time one of their fixes fails, and I'm tempted to say things like "those guys are idiots!", people like you come along to demonstrate what true idiocy looks like.
Thanks for puttin' it in perspective.
The enemies of Democracy are
We will all die!
How many LoC's is a shitton and how many Shittonnes does that equal?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Thank God BP have people like you around, to point out how idiotic they are and offer helpful suggestions.
I'm just assuming you have a doctorate in marine engineering here, by the way.
Depends whether you're talking about long shittons, or short shittons.
A long shitton is 1.12 short shittons, and a long shitton is also close enough to a Shittonne that it makes no appreciable difference.
The real question is, how many Shittonnes in a MetricFuckload?
One Shittonne equals 10 MetricFuckloads, or a decaMetricFuckload. Or, more readable, a deciShittonne equals a metric fuckload.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Robots are known as Robots. ROV's are known as Remotely Operated Vehicles. This is a human's fault, not a machine's.
They where useing on live tech and it lagged out makeing the bot mess up and the FAA wants to do the same thing airplanes.
Supercool the deposit. In other words freeze it in place.
How long before the entire oil well drains into the ocean? Because it may just happen before BP fixes this shit.
In the beginning, there was null.
Small grade nuke detonation side-drilled in at a 500 ft. depth would drop a shit-ton of ocean floor on the whole mess and stop the bleeding.
Oh, wait. I forgot BP's goal was to save their drilling expense and capture/save the existing pipe. How silly of me. :)
Anyone got a link to the clip of Fox & Friends doofus saying "What was that robot THINKING?" in regards to this mishap?
*Captcha: botched
well shoot, we could at least be scraping up 20,000 barrels a day with the Dutch rigs built for just this thing....but since they're not 100% efficient at removing the oil, someone high up in this administration (guess) said no.
Another factor that may hinder containment even more is the increasing potential for tropical storms in that area of the Gulf.
The biggest factor that will hinder containment and cleanup is that BP has no inherent motivation to either contain or clean up the oil, other than an economic one. All of the normal human responses, that it's a horrible disaster that will cause unimaginable human and environmental suffering for years if not decades, none of that matters to BP at all.
BP's interest isn't to "fix" the problem. BP's only interest is to make the problem go away.
If that's most cheaply done by hiding the problem by keeping people away from the ocean and beaches that's what they'll do. If that's most cheaply done by spinning the effects with PR so it's no longer seen as quite the disaster they'll do that. If it reaches the point where it's cheaper to declare bankruptcy, walk away from the whole thing, and (like with Exxon Valdez) use the legal system to deny the victims any care until the victims simply die then they'll do that.
Corporations have only one motivation and one thing to which they respond - money. They "care" about others only to the degree that the other might affect their own interests.
In other words, corporations are - by explicit design - sociopaths.
And so what we have in the Gulf is a situation where we have in charge of fixing the problem and caring for those injured by it an agent who has no interest whatsoever in either of those things. Their only interest was, is, and can only ever be what is good for BP.
(The U.S. Government works much the same way, which is why Dubya and Obama are themselves both sociopaths. Business and government in the U.S. aren't separate, but cooperating parts of a single, larger business/government/media entity. A larger discussion of that needs a separate thread, but the essential characteristic to recognize is action without concern for the feelings of the other party, action without empathy - i.e., sociopathy.)
So the biggest factor that will hinder containment and cleanup is the parties we have in charge have a completely different set of motivations, and resultant behavioral choices, than those of us who actually feel the pain their actions cause.
It's our false assumption that corporations (and governments) are anything other than sociopaths that leads to such cognitive dissonance when they repeatedly act in a sociopathic manner. It's not that they won't act with empathy - it's that they can't.
Ever expecting them to act empathetically, and leaving them in charge of the care for our society and our world, that's not their failure. It's ours.
One positive outcome of this horrible disaster, if we manage to live through it (and many people and possibly many species won't), is it will make undeniably clear the consequences of basing a society on values that are at their core sociopathic. The system self-destructs - by design! - which is what we're all witnessing now.
The only way out for those of us who survive will be to create social structures that have empathy intentionally and explicitly built into them, and for each of us to act moment by moment with an understanding of, and care for, each other.
What's going on down there? A BattleBots tournament?
Have gnu, will travel.
"You have two problems at work here: you have to do this under a //shitton// of water, and you are trying to cap a pipe with a //shitton// of pressure behind it."
shitton... is that a metric unit?
Oh, wow, 20k. That's like what the hole puts out in a few hours.
The reason it's a no-go is because it's roughly akin to mowing Central Park with a hand-push mower. "But I'm cutting grass!", I might say. Well, yes, but so insignificantly that it's basically a waste of effort.
And that decision is BP's decision, but you seem awful eager to nail Obama to the wall over this. What, exactly, should Obama be doing differently? That's an honest question - I've spent the last month trying to figure it out.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
is so depressing.
If they were successful in cleaning up the mess, then there wouldn't be a crisis to take advantage of anymore...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This robot must appear in front of a Congressional Hearing to be b%tch-slapped and ritually humiliated in a proper farcical manner.
Somehow when things get wrong nature will find a way of making them worse. The current storm threat may or may not cause big problems but it is the time of year when storms do rip into the oil spill area with great frequency. If a strong storm hits the beaches the storm surge could push that oil for several miles inland.
It is also of note that the oil booms seem to be doing very little to contain the spill. And so far the weather has been calm in the Gulf. It is obvious that any real wave energy will disrupt the booms completely. It won't take a hurricane to scramble those booms. A decent thunderstorm would do the job.
I am also disturbed by the line that goes that they had eleven fatalities and want to work steadily to insure that no more workers are lost. Considering that the health of millions of people will probably be adversely effected by this spill the complete safety of a few working on the rigs should not be such a priority.
Also we need to get our heads around the scope of this emergency. We all hat what happened on 9/11 but frankly this oil spill is far worse a disaster. I feel that in the end it will cost more lives than the 9/11 attack and it will cause more economic harm as well.
Yesterday a charter boat captain took his own life in despair after realizing that his business and way of life were lost.
How is it we can have several billion dollars worth of Remotely Operated Vehicles running around a mile away from their operators without some effective swarm controller software installed?
I realize that with a dozen ROV's we're probably talking at least half a dozen different operating systems from as many different vendors but it ought to be possible to overlay some basic swarm intelligence onto the top of these bots to keep them out of each others way. It might just increase the efficiency of the operation in the process as the swarm intelligence reallocates tasks based on which bot was nearest to the task, or best equipped, or could travel fastest/safest to transport material.
Possibly decades.
The larger Macondo field has potentially billions of barrels of oil. (There are arguments about whether it's merely tens of millions or as many as billions, the size of fields is always a closely-guarded corporate secret, and the geology of this area and how it's connected to other deepwater fields is not known.) That's perhaps the biggest reason why both BP and Obama are willing to sacrifice the environment to keep it open - BP for the enormous long-term profit, Obama because it would help cover U.S. energy needs during a joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran (which would close the Straits of Hormuz).
But while your comment seems like it might have been simply expressing frustration with the slow pace of BP's efforts to stop the fouling of our planet's waters, it's a very, very real possibility that this flow can never be stopped.
Again, we're considering somewhere between tens of millions and billions of barrels of oil being pumped into the world's oceans over a period of decades. So assuming the top of the chamber doesn't collapse (releasing all the oil at once, the worst of all outcomes), if the relief wells don't work we're looking at this going on for 3, 4, 5 - or as many as 30, 40, maybe even 50 - years.
I don't know to what deities all of us pray, but we ought to start praying.
What?????
Seriously, think before writing. You are just saying that BP nor anyone else should be allowed to tap oil reserves because all of this will result in complete oil reserve to gush through the sea floor. Come on!
1. pipe was removed to attach this cap
2. there was more pressure in the pipe from the reservoir already - before the blowout when they had drilling fluids in there.
3. assuming there was no blowout, how would they get ready for production? They would have capped the well until production rigging was in place. If what you wrote was remotely possibly (ie. collapse of sea floor), then it would have happened at that time anyway. Therefore what you wrote was BS.
*NEVER* has sea floor or land collapsed into an oil deposit like you've suggested. *NEVER*
You can't attach a giant ball valve not because of the reasons you wrote, but because the weld would NOT hold. Underwater welding is not easy and does not work so well, if it would work at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_welding#Wet
Another fix would be attaching another BOP to this one (essentially a giant ball valve), but BOP are not designed to be stacked like that (a BOP could be considered a giant ball valve). And the original BOP s fucked and leaking anyway.
Just, fyi, one of the best solvents you can use to remove duck tape is gasoline...
You must work for BP. :-)
Putting these psychopaths in charge of the cleanup is like putting the same cast of characters who crashed the economy back in charge of the economy.
That's exactly right (although I would argue the sometimes subtle difference that they are sociopaths, not psychopaths, as I wrote earlier).
And there's a reason for that symmetry, too - all the old systems are tearing themselves apart in order to make way for what comes next. Part of that clearing (which is great if one's part of what comes next, but not all that happy if one's part of what's dying) is making undeniably clear the unsuitability of the old ways of being to direct the next stage of our existence.
Any truly transformative moment has only two outcomes: change or death. And by making things ever worse, the systems we have previously used to guide us are fulfilling their final responsibility to us - waking us up and letting us know that's the choice we face.
It's collectively the moment when an adolescent, who previously could depend on their parents to protect, guide and care for them, must leave innocence, dependence and childhood behind and fulfill their destiny as an adult.
The "villain" in any great story is actually the force of transformation and healing, the one who awakens the sleeping hero who can face and master those forces. BP, Wall Street, Bush-Obama, all our existing social structures - they're no different. They're faithfully serving their role for us.
It's now up to us to wake up, face ourselves, and fulfill our collective destiny.
If both pressures were a shitton, the forces would balance and the oil would not gush out. Given the oil is actually gushing out in prodigious quantities, I suspect you are making all this up.
Helpful suggestion? Stand back and let some else step in and do the job right. How's that suggestion? Does it necessitate a doctorate in anything? Shall you and I count how many times BP has fucked this up now? How many doctorates has BP got, screwing around with this, demonstrating time and again that they simply cannot do it? Fewer than your post would imply, I'll bet. Thank God BO has all those educated people addressing this issue, huh? The shoreline, a huge portion of the Gulf of Mexico, and potential billions of dollars in new off-shore wealth are all screwed now, because of those winners. Idiotic? "Inept" is the better description of the previous post.
What's that? Oh, everyone should just be shut up about it, and let BP's "experts" dink around with it until - what, the whole fucking deposit has been flushed into the Goddamn Gulf? Yeah, I think we've got your number.
If you can't cope with criticism by the under-educated masses, of this utterly destructive, incompetently-managed circumstance, then think of it the words a motivational speech at a band of losers that have demonstrated they simply cannot get the job done right. Like pissed off cheerleaders.
Gimme a "B"!
Gimme a "P"!
What's it spell!?
No idea why this is marked flame-bait, since it's pretty accurate. Moderators using FB to mark down a post they don't agree with, maybe? Unfortunately, in emotionally charged subjects like this one I don't think meta-moderation helps much. :S
We all know the costs are going to be huge - and it's likely that BP will be paying them over many years rather than over the next one or two. Why? Partly because of how long it will take to get everything through the courts, and partly because cash flow won't permit them to pay this off quickly.
That's right, the robot did it. It's all the robot's fault. Bad robot.
Really, this thing was being driven by a human. Don't blame the stupid robot. Blame the stupid operator.
Or train some really strong octopuses to do it. Piece of piss.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The oil is under a fuckton of pressure. 14 shittons = 1 fuckton.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yes, the comment was our of frustration. But honestly, now that I think about it, if they had a fundamentally sound plan to stop this spill, they would have implemented it within the last 2 months. Having not seen such a fix makes me think they have no idea about how to fix it.
In the beginning, there was null.
He could shut the fuck up for a start. And that baldy bastard Henry Waxhead can put a sock in it too.
He knows even less about the technicalities of drilling than you, I and most of the twerps who post here. See Mr Underwater-welding-is-easy further up this thread.
Ever had the PHB standing behind you when you're coding or whatever? Great help, isn't it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The Niger Delta wetlands have been suffering oil damage for the last 50 years from BP and other US oil companies, perhaps the US government could ask the Nigerian government on how to deal with it.
of course any responsible is beholden to an ethical contract that doesn't crap in the mouth of said engineer or the community he serves....
Nobody honest says we shouldn't hurt a company because it will hurt shareholders. Companies *Are* liable for the damage they cause, usually--it's just that there are enough complexities and problems with our judicial systems that they can often get away paying less than the damage they produced actually costs. The other point here is that Oil Companies make a *lot* of money. Even if BP were to spend twenty billion dollars on cleanup, which is unlikely, BP would still be a *very* good buy on the market right now if you were holding for the long-term. This spill was preventable, and for that BP should have to pay more than the cost of cleanup--but even preventable accidents happen. The activity will still continue so long as it generates more wealth than it costs: that's the whole point of holding businesses liable for injury caused by their products or their workers. It internalizes the cost into the cost of the product, and if the profit generated doesn't offset the loss, then the business (in this case, BP's business) is a net loss to society under an economic model and should not continue.
We do say that shareholders won't be liable if the company goes bankrupt. Otherwise, there would be a lot more hardship and the economy would function much worse. But that mostly effects small businesses, and professionals who get sued--usually but not always illegitimately. The latter case is problematic--if you took away the liability shield, a doc could work for 20 years, not screw up but run into a jury that likes the patient who the doc couldn't help, the insurance company finds a way off the hook (which sometimes happens), and suddenly the doc and his family have nothing. The former case is problematic because it makes it much riskier to invest, which raises risk for *everything* that happens in the economy, and creates a domino-effect when bad things happen. Limited Liability is a kind of insurance that says negative externalities of a business shouldn't force the person trying to make a go of it to sell his house if the business goes wrong. He just doesn't get the money to keep making payments on his house, maybe.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Call me Captain Obvious, but given the loss risk, the time it takes to drill relief wells, and the lack of other working options, wouldn't it make sense to require that relief wells be in place *before* production begins on new wells in the future?
Thanks,
-David
How sad that a person could read a post about moving from a world of horrific collective sociopathy to one in which we care about and for each other, and their reaction would be to consider that hope a "Troll."
After the Ixtoc I oil spill, we learned that the only working method to to stop the spill is drilling relieve wells. So to me it seems the best way to prevent large spills is to drill at least two wells for every drilling plattform. Then we have redundancy and in the case of a single well failure the remaining well can be used for pressure relieve. Besides the obvious costs of additional wells, is there any other reason why this was never made obligatory by the government 30 years after Ixtoc I ?
Waldo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_manipulator
Tim S.
You can't deny his arguments. :)
Do you expect a CEO to explain to his shareholders "We took that decision because I believe that it's fair"?
It's just money. And I'm not saying that it's not right, I'm just saying that you can't expect from corporation to self-regulate.
Regulation from government (e.g. by the citizens) it's not interference, it's something called democracy.
and mod me up too
Moderation is overrated.
And then the pressure builds up behind the top of the wellhead, forcing oil through the porous sandstone compromising the integrity of the sea bed possibly causing a complete rupture of the ocean floor leading to the entire contents of the oil deposit rushing into the gulf.
And yet this oil has been sitting under pressure for millions of years. Poor sandstone putting up with that.
I really hope you're right, but I think you're neglecting the damage months of erosion at high pressure will do.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I most definitely would mod you up with one of these here mod points, but...well, you know the rules. ;-)
Having not seen such a fix makes me think they have no idea about how to fix it.
They do have an idea, and that's the relief wells. (Capping the well from the top isn't an option because the integrity of the well casing is compromised - cap the top and the oil will just squirt out further down the pipe and then leak out the sea floor somewhere.) The relief wells aren't done yet because 1) they're even harder to drill than the first well because they have to go sideways and 2) instead of hitting a huge mountain of oil they have to intersect a tiny sliver of well bore. And all that's happening under a mile of water and two miles of earth..
The idea they really don't have is what to do if the relief wells don't work. That's environmental doomsday. I suspect in that case they effectively give up on stopping the spill, drill as many new wells as possible as fast as possible to get more oil out this field (arguing that oil pumped out is oil that won't be spilled out - it's just a complete coincidence that these new wells will make BP tons of money!), and fall back to using the legal system to limit their financial damages.
I think the problem you're experiencing is BP's definition of "fix" is very different than yours or mine. To BP, "fixing" the well means making sure as much oil as possible can be extracted for sale. In that analysis, if 10 million barrels are pumped into the ocean but 40 million are eventually extracted, that's a far superior "fix" than making sure our environment is completely protected but at the cost of losing access to the oil.
Why can't they lower a half sphere (metal, fabic, plastic, whatever) that sits perhaps 50 meters or more above the leak and catches all the rising oil? - and at the top of it are two or three pumps pumping to the surface at a rate faster than the leak is leaking?
Hello from 11 miles South of the spill zone.
We were actually expecting a lot more oil from this news, but the surface is still relatively clear, with small, 20-50 meter blobs of oil to be collected and a great deal of green water otherwise. Two task forces are out here skimming, and 500 bbls a day is a good haul for one of the skimmers. We've been hampered by several fronts passing through the area, but collection continues. There's been a C-130 dropping dispersant in the area, with good results on the oil (although it makes the remains too thin to skim).
Although many here will scoff at the daily take we're seeing on the skimming vessels, it's surprising how little oil you see around the spill zone. A lot, I hope, is burning in that giant fire in the horizon. I expected a spike in how much oil we'd see, but it's all going... somewhere, just not up here.
Right.
Sure.
I mean: No.
It's not like this oil is anything new. It's been under huge pressure for a very long time, and was largely contained by the sandstone until we started drilling through it. Turning the valves off, if they existed, would work just fine as long as the hole itself didn't leak and the closing of the valves happened slowly enough to prevent the momentum of the moving fluid from ruining things.
I have nothing else to add, except: There's a reason why they teach a little bit of geology in school.
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Did you learn about erosion in geology class?
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Yes.
I think that bit was covered under the generalization of "as long as the hole doesn't leak."
Did you have a point?
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The hole is leaking.
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It is?
And here I was thinking that the leaking bit of the oil well was the pipe that sits within the hole.
Oh, well.
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