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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?
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
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.
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?
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
What's going on down there? A BattleBots tournament?
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
Not really. Remember Union Carbide, in Bhopal? Yet still those in the pocket of the big industries will always shout about their self-regulation.
AC
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.
"Engineers"
Is that the best you can come up with? "Engineers" ? As if BP go out of their way to employ dumbshits because they are cheap? Before you go crapping about "engineers" in a derogatory fashion I invite you to google just what some of the "engineers" have come up with in the past, like the Thunderhorse platform. You know that one that's the largest of it's kind in the world. The one which cost $5 billion to make.
But clearly there's no engineers at BP, clearly you're smarter than all of them.
In reality though you're just another internet "genius" who thinks they know better.
Just for the record, why not go ahead and apply for one of the "engineering" positions at BP. Then maybe you'll have a fucking clue at just how hyper competitive positions at that company are, and while you're at it go plug the fucking leak yourself, though I bet you wouldn't even know the air pressure at sea level let alone know what the pressure is at the sea bed without looking it up.
Yes this post is troll because frankly you deserve it.
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.
Unfortunately, that's sort of like using a hand grenade to patch a leak in the roof.
While I agree BP will probably go to almost any lengths to preserve access to this field, the big problem with using explosives to attempt to cap this blowout is the roof of the chamber seems very brittle. Any explosion large enough to cap the well could fracture the roof of the chamber to the extent it would start leaking over a wide area of sea floor, which could then never be stopped, or a large section of the roof would collapse entirely, resulting in a catastrophic release of oil and gas.
So it's probably best if our British Clampett family doesn't try to use dynamite to stop that bubblin' crude in the swamp.
I thought this put it quite well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bLQD7IhW88
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
Just, fyi, one of the best solvents you can use to remove duck tape is gasoline...
You must work for BP. :-)
The problem is the when government regulation does prevent a disaster from happening it becomes a non-event and no one pays any attention to it. It's easy for government to get the blame when things don't go well but they seldom get much credit when thing do go well.
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.
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.
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.
No, it's mostly because they can put a lot of money into an account for "restoration purposes" and then take for fucking ever to actually pay out on the claims. This way, they can spend a lot of time investing the money and doing other such financial trickery so that the money they finally do pay out will be interest accrued, etc.
Also they can put some amount of money into an account, lose it all, and then claim that despite making billions a year that they're completely broke and can't pay anything off.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Unfortunately, that's sort of like using a hand grenade to patch a leak in the roof.
Or not. Since a roof leak drips down only when it rains, not at a continuous 2K psi. And a roof is in the air, not 1 mile underwater. etc. etc. Maybe I'm missing it but this analogy seems to weak to support your argument.
While I agree BP will probably go to almost any lengths to preserve access to this field, the big problem with using explosives to attempt to cap this blowout is the roof of the chamber seems very brittle. Any explosion large enough to cap the well could fracture the roof of the chamber to the extent it would start leaking over a wide area of sea floor, which could then never be stopped, or a large section of the roof would collapse entirely, resulting in a catastrophic release of oil and gas.
I'd like to see a source for the "very brittle" comment, as well as data on how thick the chamber roof actually is as I just don't know. The wikipedia article on the spill states BP rejected conventional explosive use and that no one has ever considered a nuclear option, because of treaty issues and environmental impact (like there's none now). I think the whole "blow it up" meme has traction simply because of BP's inability to fix their mess and the US government's ineffectiveness in getting anything done about it.
Moderation in everything, including moderation.
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.
Kid-proof tablet..
Maybe I'm missing it but this analogy seems to weak to support your argument.
The point wasn't that the analogy was identical (unless one's home is in a high-pressure oil formation under miles of rock in the Gulf of Mexico), but that rather than thinking of the well as just a first-order infinitely thick layer of solid rock, it was better to think of the well as being a hole in the roof of the oil formation. (I suppose one could also use the analogy of a hole in a bucket, if one prefers to think of the direction of fluid flow and not the orientation relative to gravity.) Thus the leak isn't a thing to be covered up (in the physical as opposed to PR sense :-/ ), but something more fragile that needs to be patched.
Which then leads to your next question, about "brittle" rocks. The relevant geology of this part of the Gulf and this canyon in particular is salt domes and shales. Salt domes are formed as salt is extruded through breaks in "brittle" rock (e.g. the Merriam-Webster definition of diapir). The notion of what constitutes "brittle" is different at a geologic scale than at a human one, but the fairly standard reference to these structures is "brittle." Just do a search for the terms "brittle" and "caprock" - that should get you started. You might also read about blowouts in similar structures, such as the famous Spindletop.
The wikipedia article on the spill states BP rejected conventional explosive use and that no one has ever considered a nuclear option, because of treaty issues and environmental impact.
As you observed, the notion there's some meaningful concern about "environmental impact" is ludicrous.
The reason BP would reject explosive use (if it could even work) is it would destroy the well and seal this part of the field permanently - leaving all of that money forever trapped under the ocean, instead of in the bank accounts of BP where it rightfully belongs.
(I'd say a somewhat broader "national security"-political-monetary rationale is why the Obama administration and BP are clearly partners and not adversaries - their mutual goal is to preserve access to the oil.)
I think BP's actions have been quite easily predicted if one understands 1) they have no concern for anything other than money (BP's a corporation, that's what corporations do), and 2) oil is money. Thus the goal is to mitigate the expense of any environmental effects, not the effects themselves, and to preserve access to the money, i.e. the oil.
Did you learn about erosion in geology class?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So I personally don't blame any of the engineers for this mess.
If they are engineers, they signed off on the project.
If they signed off on it, they are for it.
Period.
That's why engineers get the fancy stamp.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
If they signed off on it, they are responsible for it.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Yes.
I think that bit was covered under the generalization of "as long as the hole doesn't leak."
Did you have a point?
Kid-proof tablet..
The hole is leaking.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
Kid-proof tablet..