Finally!! . . BP tries tube to siphon spewing Gulf oil to tanker

By ALLEN G. BREED and CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writers Allen G. Breed And Curt Anderson, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 9 mins ago
Undersea robots tried to thread a small tube into the jagged pipe that is pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico on Friday in BP's latest attempt to cut down on the spill from a blown-out well that has pumped out more than 4 million gallons of crude.

Company engineers were trying to move the 6-inch tube into the leaking 21-inch pipe, known as the riser. The smaller tube will be surrounded by a stopper to keep oil from leaking into the sea. BP said it hopes to know by Friday evening if the tube succeeds in siphoning the oil to a tanker at the surface.

Since an April 20 drilling rig explosion set off the catastrophic spill, BP PLC has tried several ideas to plug the leak that is spewing at least 210,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf a day. The size of the undulating spill was about 3,650 square miles, or the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, said Hans Graber, director of the University of Miami's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing.

In the fateful hours before the Deepwater Horizon exploded about 50 miles off the Louisiana shore, a safety test was supposedly performed to detect if explosive gas was leaking from the mile-deep well.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100514/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill


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IMO, unless oil companies have a way to promptly PICK UP OIL from the ocean . . .

they shouldn't be permitted to do any drilling would would create the risk of oil

spilling into ocean.

but how much remains to be seen.

The pipe in 21 inches in diameter. The tube is 6 inches in diameter.
6 inch pipe can move a significant amount of fluid per hour.

If the tube is unheated I would think they would have too right?
I mean otherwise the expanding gas is going to super cool liquid in tube and freeze it solid right?

I grew up in the oil patch. I know just enough to ask questions. I spent many a night as a little kid asleep in the back seat of our 48 Chevy while waiting for a well to come in. I vividly remember one night when one blew in. My Dad rushed to the car and started backing up across the wheat field as the windshield became covered with mud.

My Dad changed professions in the 1960s but after he retired became a free lance pumper. He pumped for his friends so they could take vacations. The stinky oil fields were his first love. He died last November and it is times like this I really miss him because he could answer all of my questions.

through a 6 inch hose at modest pressure. The riser is 21 inches but pinched off.

I know you move a lot of water through 6 inch pipe but wasn't sure about oil (being higher viscosity and all).

Crude would move faster. However, the length of the pipe would be a factor.

A 6-inch pipe has 8% of the cross-sectional area of a 21-inch pipe.
The area-to-surface ratio is about three times greater in the 6-inch pipe than in the 21-inch pipe, so head loss and turbulence will be greater.

The significant amount of fluid that a 6-inch pipe can move may simply not be enough in comparison to the amount that needs to be moved in this application.

As another post in this thread pointed out, the video clearly shows a significant gas phase. Oil production equipment includes gas procession facilities. Do the waiting tankers have such equipment?

I believe this is more theater.

I'll be pleasantly surprised (and $50 poorer) if this works.

The release rate is roughly 10% compared to if the well was fully open.

Thus the 6 inch pipe doesn't need to pull 100% of the flow rate of a 21 inch pipe it simply needs to handle the currently reduced flow rate.

This well was rated at 50,000 barrels per day. It is "only" leaking 5,000 barrels per day.

ten times the 5,000 bbl estimate.

Using a few basic engineering assumptions, I calculated about 37,000 bbls when I saw the video.

Just estimates, but BP is refusing to let scientists who have the equipment to accurately measure the flow access the site.

You have a link to that?
And what is this 100,00 psi you are peddling? You have a link to that?

This is honestly the first you have heard of 5000 barrels.

Here have fun

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=5000+barrels+bp

That estimate was raised to 5000 bbl/day

Analysis of the video footage (withheld by BP until Wednesday) indicates it could be an order of magnitude higher than that.

This is very similar to the way Exxon Valdez estimates changed over time, with the final best estimate never seeing the light of day. Exxon locked onto its low-end estimate of 10.8 million gallons of crude discharged. Subsequent analysis of the oil-water ratios in the tankers used to lighter the oil from the Exxon Valdez and transport it to refineries in Hawaii and on the West Coast resulted in a new estimate of about 30 million gallons. The better estimate was buried in gag orders, lawsuits and bureaucracy.

Because if they can siphon off a good percentage of the declared rate, they can claim more success than they achieve.

which is why they are reporting what they are doing instead of what they are accomplishing.

For example, a few days ago (the last time I checked) they were boasting 4 million gallons of oil-water mixture recovered. That sounds like a lot, especially when their estimates of how much oil had been released was about 4 million gallons at that time (We know now, of course, that that estimate is probably off by an order of magnitude). What they don't report is that the oil-water mixture, given the condition of the sea, the condition of the oil, and the type of skimmers being used, is probably 90%, and more likely 95% water.

The Coast Guard today stated, in response to queries about new higher estimated discharge rate, that the amount wasn't important because they plan for such things and they have all the equipment they need. First, the amount is relevant, so his entire statement should cease to be considered credible based on that alone, but they clearly do not have the equipment they need or they would have been able to have a worst case scenario under significant control in the required 72 hours. And, of course, they wouldn't be pulling equipment, people and chemicals from all over the country.

This is theater, and not even good theater. We can see the strings. We can see BP's mouth moving when anyone speaks. This is bullshit.

Watch the damage become more and more apparent as time passes.

....

RICK STEINER: Well, it’s very—it’s tragic, actually. I mean, all these spills that we’ve worked on around the world, they have their own similarities and differences, but this one’s really historic in a number of ways. It’s the largest, deepest blowout in history. It’s coming out at 5,000 feet deep, as people know, and about fifty miles offshore. And it’s a light Gulf of Mexico crude, so it’s got some things different than the Exxon Valdez, for instance. By the—when the oil comes out of the wellhead, the blowout, it’s emulsifying very quickly with this very dense, high-pressure seawater. And then these things act in complicated ways, where then the plume will rise a few hundred meters, and some research has shown that in smaller blowouts in a little bit shallower water that then the plume will stabilize at a particular depth, that it will reach a terminal depth, and then just start flowing subsurface. So I think the easy way to look at this is that a lot of the oil that’s come out still probably hasn’t surfaced yet. But even the stuff that has surfaced, it’s covering two to three thousand square miles in broken patches. I mean, it’s not solid, but broken patches. If you use the conservative estimate that BP is putting out and the government apparently is concurring with, then there’s four to five million gallons that have come out so far over the last three weeks. And it’s a very complicated event.

....

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/12/as_gulf_of_mexico_oil_spill

The emulsification is very apparent in the video. Another reason BP delayed releasing the video.

too quickly for me to pick up!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4381041

links from OP:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Gulf-Of-Mexico-Oil-Spill-BP-Boss-Tony-Hayward-Says-The-Leak-Is-Tiny-Compared-To-Entire-Ocean/Article/201005215631647?lpos=World_News_Top_Stories_Header_2&lid=ARTICLE_15631647_Gulf_Of_Mexico_Oil_Spill:_BP_Bo


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/13/bp-oil-spill-ocean-footage

It's only 8% of the cross-section but the oil will take the path of least resistance, won't it?

I know, I know.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126809525&ps=cprs

nt

:thumbsup:

than in cleaning up the fugging mess crated by its greed and negligence.

Maybe we could harvest plastic from the Great Pacific Gyre and build a mile diameter tube that will at least contain plumes so they can be pumped and separated.

-Hoot