Everybody better get used to the idea that Deepwater Horizon will leak until September

The history of Ixtoc 1 shows that all attempts to stop the flow in a deepwater drill site are for naught. You can try everything, but nothing really works that deep down under that kind of water pressure with the pressue of the gases and oil coming out of the hole. The gases are liquified and working at those depths are simply not something humans are familiar with. We've more expertise dealing with the rigors of outer space than dealing with anything at those depths in the ocean. Keep in mind, too, Ixtoc 1 wasn't as deep as Deepwater Horizon.

Basically, the depths of the seas have been ignored as man reached for the stars.

So if the flow is actually stopped before a relief well is in place, it'll be an engineering miracle. And keep in mind, a relief well will not completely stop the leak, just most of it.

For my part, I'm hoping Kevin Costner's $26 million investment pays off as that is the only thing that will avert a Gulf wide and East Coast wide ecological disaster.

Some who don't think enough is being done obviously have not considered just how out of reach this thing is. I think I read that it's about a mile underwater. Think of the water pressure at that depth. It's a miracle that they were able to get the straw in.

It would seem to me that it would be easier now that you have a "guide" pipe. Isn't it reasonable to drop another larger siphon pipe down there. I would think you could put a V shaped bracket on the outside of the pipe and once that bracket is around the first pipe you could slide the larger one into the hole.

But it could also backfire.

I think it's worth a shot.



:patriot:

There are a lot of things that are worth a shot.

If it works, IMO, it'll be a marvel of engineering. In fact, if it works it deserves the designation of the greatest wonder of the modern world because as an engineering feat, it would outdo anything else man has achieved including the moon landing.

That's my humble opinion of "Top kill", any way.

in evidence here. Let me start by saying something:

This operation should never have been allowed to begin, since there is no effective means for handling a blowout, as we have seen.

That said, the incident occurred, and the proof of my previous statement is in evidence.

1. As you say, the relief wells are probably going to be the only thing that ends this. Kevin Costner's device may help clean up the oil that has been spilled and will continue to be spilled, but, based on the dimensions of it, it would take hundreds, if not thousands of the devices to do the job of cleaning up multiple millions of gallons of contaminated seawater.

2. The US goverment has no technology capable of dealing with this situation. The only such technology, such as it is, is in the hands of the oil drilling companies. We do have submersibles in the Navy and at NOAA that can reach those depths, but so do the oil drilling companies, and those submersibles are already in place and are designed for the manipulations needed in this situation. Further, the US military has no expertise in offshore oil drilling technology, and can do nothing to fix the problem.

2. President Obama has spoken about this situation every day. I've heard and seen him do so. Given the inability of the Federal goverment to actually do anything to ameliorate the problem, there is little else he can do. What he is doing out of the public view is another matter, and is not public.

3. We cannot "nationalize" BP. There is no mechanism available to do so.

4. We cannot penalize BP without due process. In the meantime, they have the responsibility for stopping the leak, cleaning up the mess, and paying for all they caused. Legal action in this regard will go on for years, if not decades.

5. We are not going to "nuke" the site. That would probably cause even more widespread leaking, and such actions have never been tested at these depths. To do so would be incredibly foolish.

6. This blowout is unprecedented, due to its depth and the depth of the actual well.

7. Hand-waving and blame-placing will do nothing to solve the problem. It will only serve to create distractions from the actual job at hand.

8. This blowout will not be fixed today, tomorrow, or next month, in all probability. It is going to take months to be put under control, and there's not a damn thing we can do about that.

Finally, again: This well should never have been allowed in the first place. It was, and the process was well underway when President Obama took office. We can all agree that it is a bad idea to do deep-water drilling when the technology for fixing things when it goes wrong doesn't exist. We're paying for that, and for our inattention for the past 20 or so years. Drill, Baby, Drill is a bad idea if we're going to drill without the proper precautions or knowledge.

But, this is not President Obama's accident. It is BPs accident. President Obama cannot reverse what happened. Despite his powers, he can't do a Superman deal and fly around the Earth and turn back time. If you think you are frustrated, imagine how much more frustrated he is. He can actually do nothing to hurry the fix up. The only people capable of doing so are the very people who caused the accident through their own negligence, and there's not a damn thing we can do about that, since they're the only ones with the equipment and skills required to fix it.

So, please, BACK THE FUCK OFF OBAMA! Save your scorn for those responsible for this. Blame those who are culpable. Don't write untruths about the situation. Study it and learn what is being done and what is possible. Take advice only from those who understand deep sea operations, not from academics with manicures. The guys with grease under their fingernails are the ones who are going to fix this, even though they're the same ones who caused it. There is no other option.

That ship sailed many years ago.

The magic wand has a name, too.

"Regulation"

And Obama's commission only exists to recommend regulatory measures to avert something similar in the future. Hopefully, the recommendation will be incredibly strong regulatory control of every aspect of deep water drilling with on site inspections and definitive proof that safety measures are being followed to the letter. Even then, there will still be future blowouts so hopefully counter measures to contain such a thing will also be a recommendation of the commission.

Simple. Just roll back ALL deregulation passed since 1981. This should help avoid a lot of future disasters. (And not just ones involving oil company greed)

We have to knock this shit off.

50,686 bore holes/wells and 43,656 miles of pipeline in the Gulf.

Other graphics in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8385057



:patriot:

But, that permission was given long ago. Our lust for petroleum knows no bounds. Perhaps this incident will inform us, but I doubt it very much.

but I doubt any oil company would find such activities profitable given the required safety measures.

He's not Superman and can't play the spill backwards, but he's also not helpless.

One thing he could do right now is to authorize the dredging to make sand "booms" by leaning on the Corpse. The Corpse of Engineers is taking their sweet time looking over the permit.

That and separate the gov't from BP.

It may not be his accident, but his response is the same as Bush's with Katrina complete with local and state officials begging for help on TV.

How is that? Are you in the administration? Are you privy to what goes on outside of public view?

No? Just as I thought. You're just another "expert" without portfolio.

A voice of reason in the wilderness of hysteria. Rec.

I'm used to it.

I doff my cap to you. :applause:

what I've been reading here over the past couple of days.

Too bad the Navy is inept at deepwater ventures. They need BP advice the next time a sub goes missing, eh?

rescue. It's not designed to do oil rig work. Different tools for different purposes. NOAA has a submersible that could probably do some of the work required, but the equipment specially designed for underwater oil rig work is already on the scene of the problem.

Specialized tools are almost always owned by companies that do specialized work. For example, if you take an auto mechanics toolbox to a place where they work on heavy off-road construction equipment, you won't get much work done. It takes a different set of tools for each job.

Again, I believe you lack an understanding of what's involved in the work needed to stop this leak. The Navy doesn't have the equipment needed for the job, nor the training and expertise to even understand what they'd be looking at if they went down there. The US Navy has a different mission.

It is a salvage operation, and an operation that BP is not able to handle.
It hasn't done this work before, has it?

So you don't have a clue, except to follow BP around and pray they fix their screwup?

And I shouldn't even think the mighty US Navy can do anything about a pipe laying there with, OMG, pressure?

Of course I lack a complete understanding of what's going on. Duh!
But you lack even more. So, take your own advice. Whatever it is.

Your advice is worthless to me. Others may suck it up. Not me.

Because the only hope of stopping this gusher before the relief well is finished is the kill shot of mud. That kill shot must be made while not destroying the blow out preventer already in place, because that would likely increase the flow of oil rather than stop it. The BOP is a piece of oil rig equipment that the Navy has no experience working with. That's not to say the Navy can't oversee the operations and hammer BP at every chance, but the Navy has never worked with this equipment before, the the best of my knowledge.

It's all I got, so I'm not giving up on it. Maybe being so far down is an advantage. If the drilling mud is 2x as dense as water, then that will be (0.43psi/ft)*5280ft = 2270 psi at the bottom of the top kill pipe. That pressure is needed to counteract the pressure of the oil.

I need to stop thinking about it, though. As I type this I keep thinking of reasons there is no way top kill is going to work.

:(

That this needs to be buried waaaay down here in a subthread.

I believe it needs to be it's own OP

Excellent piece. Just excellent.

since they have drilled a well without the means of shutting it off. nt

they should have used. That was not from a lack of understanding the risks. Rather, it was a greed-based decision. I have no doubt whatever that they are regretting that decision intensely right now. It sucks to be BP today. Now, they have to try to fix what they should have prevented. This is going to cost them far more to do than the needed equipment would have cost...by a major multiplier.

Greedy morons abound in every industry. Most times, they get away with their risky behavior. Not this time.

Blame in this attaches directly to BP.

from the depth of 5,000. That means to me that they are ignorant of deep water drilling techniques.
I don't disagree with you points about BP's careless greed. This incident is one of the worst I can remember. If it takes several more months to stop the flow, the Gulf will most likely be a dead zone for 50 or more years.

I don't blame people for being angry and frustrated. But 5000 deep down makes everything extremely difficult. This is all experimental guessing to stop the leak, no one has ever tried some of the methods this far down.

this are irrelevant. They're just using the incident as a new reason to criticize the Obama administration. A couple of months ago, they were criticizing something else, and something else before that. Any excuse will do.

experts better then what BP has helping them. The better experts on this type of thing ARE in the oil companies, not the govt. Now, I get the anger. But people saying Obama is doing nothing to stop the leak just have no idea what 5000 feet below is like. Spills in more shallow water have taken months to stop.

Especially that last paragraph.

Sid

I think it can be nuked and quite safely about 2000 ft below the sea floor; as a tactical nuke the only device that would have the explosive force required within a small enough package (the drill shaft is not that big).

I'm appreciative of Costner's effort and cash, but why September?

I'm giving it a few more weeks to clean things up at the well site and finally stop the leak.

This estimate is based upon what it took to stop the Ixtoc 1 leak which ultimately spewed about 140 million gallons of crude into the Gulf.

it could be until 2011 before the thing is shut off.

can begin the operations required to seal the fractured structure, which is about 4 miles below the surface of the Gulf. There's no way to speed up the drilling and operations needed to do the sealing. It's proceeding at full speed already.

Which assumes that nothing goes wrong with that.

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..Costner's invention could be deployed in a way significant enough to tackle the size of this. It looks like the units are small scale. Everything helps though...get 'em fired up i say.

If "top kill" should work, it'll be considered one of the greatest feats of engineering in human history.

If "top kill" should work, it'll be considered one of the greatest feats of engineering in human history.

Actually, Ixtoc 1 was more than twice as deep.

Ixtoc 1 = 11,800 feet
Deepwater Horizon = 5,000 feet

The 5,000 feet for Deepwater represents the distance from the surface of the water to the ocean floor.

The 11,800 feet for Ixtoc represents the distance from the surface of the water to the bottom of the well.

that this disaster would not happen. Even with high minded corporations that want the best for the environment (which we do not have) and government agencies working hard to protect the people who pay their salaries (which we do not have) this kind of accident is a huge statistical probability. These guys are working on the skinny edge of what we know how to do. Put that with their greedy need to maximize profits and the criminal lack of government responsibility and this is not the first. There are hundreds and hundreds of these things. It will happen again. And again. And again.

Boy are we stupid.

Never voted republican, but Clinton and Obama both thought it was something to do.

Do you live in another country?

it is called representative government no?

One of the ways they represented you was to give a pass to drilling in places where they shouldn't.

Do we really want to play this as a game of semantics?

Lots of myopic fools, but I'd put Cheney at the top of the list.

of a pathological criminal.' Bah! What did he know?

You listen to some of the hapless mutts on here babbling on triumphally about Darwin, as if he was the key to making us gods. The input of fallen human nature, in this sphere, most notably on the power people, never seems to have impinged on their faint, inchoate consciousness.

we need only pray hard and the oil will stop. :puke:

Sid

November 3, 2009

An oil well that has been spewing its contents into the Indian Ocean off WA for more than two months has finally been "killed", the company operating it says.

PTTEP Australasia said it had pumped 3400 barrels of heavy mud down a relief well and stopped a fire blazing since Sunday aboard the West Atlas oil rig about 200km off the Kimberley coast.

The mud had successfully intercepted the leaking Montara well about 3.45pm today, the company said. An oil well that has been spewing its contents into the Indian Ocean off WA for more than two months has finally been "killed", the company operating it says.

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/oil-spill-finally-stopped-company-20091103-hv56.html

excuses.

They made no excuses when collecting their profits, gave out leases for areas that could not be managed in the case of an emergency, accepted campaign contributions, ignored all protest of their insane plots, lied about the benefits of drilling, rolled out more plans for insane activity, or any other time.

They can pull a miracle right out of their asses. Pols and execs. Necessity is the mother of invention so no slack, no reason, just do it and clean up the mess. Restore the life if you have to finance a whole new level of genetics. Make it whole down to the rise in price to a grain of rice created by the loss of other edibles, every blade of grass, and the last lost tadpole.

will do nothing but give you high blood pressure.

Barring an engineering feat of an extreme magnitude, and that is still possible though highly unlikely, September is the outside earliest this thing is stopped.

Facts are stubborn things.

I say to those who tell us that we should just get used to it that they are the ones who should STFU. BP damn well better fix this screwup and do it yesterday. I will cut BP no slack, will not lay off, and will not restrain myself from expressing my opinions.

I can hardly believe the pontification on this thread.
Who the fuck do they think they are telling us we don't have a right to do and say what we want?

But barring incredible miracles of underwater technology, it won't stop anytime soon.

Doesn't make you look very good either way, but at least you aren't pretending.

(God forbid) a major hurricane(s) in the Summer/early Fall, that will complicate, screw up and delay things even more. And as we all know, the Gulf does not lack for hurricanes.

Think we'll see Hurricane Walter?

I wouldn't be surprised if we did.

Is that when it would be depleted?

August is the current estimate on when a relief well will be finished.

September is a realistic expectation for the flow to have been stopped.

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We are not risking the future of the planet and our species over this spill and suggesting such is ridiculous in the extreme.

LOL had to do it.

Again, what are you basing that on? What impact studies have you seen?

I think we really are seeing the limits of our engineering capabilities in the entire world. I'm a little more optimistic however, I think we've progressed technologically since Ixtoc 1 and that it won't be gushing for another 4 months. I'm going for 1 more month.

But if the top kill method fails then look at the relief well in two to three more months being the big solution.

upon the gulf, and likely beyond.

But kudos for the classy analogy.

It is usually advise given to "get through it and live to recover".

If you want experimental deep sea water technology to suddenly advance 15 years overnight, then be my guest. The OP is laying out the technical facts.

And I know actual deep sea explorers, personally, and have for most of my lifetime. The difficulties are well understood by those people, clearly. They would never say that anyone should 'get used to' such disasters, that language would revolt them. That message would disgust them. Know the facts? Absolutely. Become comfortable with those facts? No way. Encourage apathy toward those facts rather than action because of them? A terrible thing to do.
To explain or understand the technical facts, there is no need to use emotional words, nor to have any point of view on how others should deal with those facts. 'Get used to it' stinks as a message, it is in no way a technical fact. If the fact is the gusher will gush for months, fine. Telling people how to react to the fact is not technical, it is political, and editorial.

I have an opinion, and that opinion is that facts are facts, and opinion is opinion. This is what I was telling the poster who was claiming the OP is 'just facts'. It is facts+ opinions about how those facts should be processed by others. I did not agree with her opinion on the objective and lexicon of the OP. Does that bother you somehow? Why?
I notice you did not counter any of the points I made about the language and message of the OP, just made an attempt to further personalize an important issue. It was your response that was emotional, editorial, and not addressing an issue, but an individual. And that is what it is, free standing and without comment from me.

because if they are able to stop it before September it will be the greatest feat of engineering in human history.

And September is pushing it. If it's stoppe din September then everything went PERFECT with the pressure relief well.

We need to stop deep offshore drilling. Even if the chance of a leak is small, the damage is so great, it isn't worth it. We need to get off the oil teat.

Why are we being told to calm down? Why are we being told to accept this?

Why are privatized solutions - now we have the Kostner thing - being praised?

Why are partisan political concerns to be seen as the most important thing?

Why are we being lectured in condescending and paternalistic tones?

:puke: :puke: :puke:

Newsflash for ya: That ain't "NO LEAK" or "SPILL"-it's a GUSHING VOLCANO!!!

It'll take about another month to wrap things up.

And that's if everything goes as planned with the pressure relief well.

Thanks for the wisdom.

It took the Ausies 5 attempts to seal their blowout.

BP is drilling only 2 wells so far. Hopefully they don't miss with both wells and/or start drilling some more backups.