Thinking about the BP Oil spill...

[dbhost]

and looking at my dust collection setup, and the thought crossed my mind...

Why can't BP build and install a giant blast gate to stop the flow?

[chopnhack]

I think that was the idea with the cap, however, they just wanted to siphon off. In order to shut the "gate" would require them to weld the pipe and cap together. I don't think that given the amount of leakage from around the cap that it could be fused. The last I had read one of the robots had knocked into the cap releasing gas and they had to pull the cap off!

[dbhost]

Funny thing is, I am usually pretty stable on these sorts of things, but I must admit, from my perspective, it looks like Larry, Curly, and Moe are trying to stop this thing up... I mean I just don't get why it's still leaking... Heck, jam pipes over it, then joint the next one and so on until it comes up over the surface and pump it off then...

There has GOT to be something we are not hearing about this that is keeping them from being able to actually do anything...

[tommyt654]

This is turning into a horrendous mess,Kinda what the natural gas comp. are doing to folks out west. Has anyone seen Gasland yet, Boy I,ll never live in Texas or Louisiana I may only have 25-35 yrs left but I want them Cancer free. Good luck to all those folks livin out in the Dallas FtWorth area and around Nawleans. I dang sure wouldn,t be drinkin any tapwater in that area.

[dbhost]

This is turning into a horrendous mess,Kinda what the natural gas comp. are doing to folks out west. Has anyone seen Gasland yet, Boy I,ll never live in Texas or Louisiana I may only hace 25-35 yrs left but I want them Cancer free. Good luck to all those folks livin out in the Dallas FtWorth area and around Nawleans. I dang sure wouldn,t be drinkin any tapwater in that area.

There is a DARNED good reason I have a full reverse osmosis system for my entire water system, not just under the sink... And I have it tested semi annually at an independent lab. No tap water for me of my family thank you very much!

[tommyt654]

Hey Good for you but what about the rest of your fellow Texans anyone out there doin anything about it at all ?

[natausch]

The only bright side of the Natural Gas issue illustrated in Gasland is that it is individual wells affected and not aquafers. Scary stuff.

[tommyt654]

Who you kidding,I would think a creek bed would qualify as a natural aquafer if there ever was one as well as those bogs and other creekbeds, its all seeping into the waterbase. When was the last time you saw someone light a bubbling creekbed on fire with a match. You should re-watch the show its all in the natural aquafers and only going to get worse, Americas next ecological disaster at the name of profit.

[iceman61]

This thing is going to make the La Brea Tar Pits look like a single drop of oil on an airport runway. To call this a horrendous disaster is an understatement.

[tommyt654]

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publ...cle_6042.shtml, I,d like to suggest eveyone here read this article and watch the HBO Special, This is not intended as a political statement BTW, but do contact you appropriate representatives and givem an earful.

[Shep]

I heard a good solution about a month ago on a local radio show. The caller suggested simply crimping the pipe closed. This guy aparantly worked in the oil business and said that it would be able cut off 99% of the flow quickly.

[radhak]

Funny thing is, I am usually pretty stable on these sorts of things, but I must admit, from my perspective, it looks like Larry, Curly, and Moe are trying to stop this thing up... I mean I just don't get why it's still leaking... Heck, jam pipes over it, then joint the next one and so on until it comes up over the surface and pump it off then...

There has GOT to be something we are not hearing about this that is keeping them from being able to actually do anything...

I think this must be one of the toughest things to fix on the fly.

Have you ever had to change a faucet or replace a hose in the garden? And one of those many times you forgot to close the mains (or somehow could not shut off the water supply), and it was practically impossible to bring the two pipes together because of the force of the water? This is similar, just maybe a million times tougher : the pressure of the oil gushing out must be around 10,000 pounds per sq. inch at a conservative estimate. And at depths of 1 mile in ocean waters, it must be like moving in a tub of thick treacle. To top it all, the actual work is done by robotic structures under remote control : always an iffy proposition. And if I recall a TV segment right, even the material needed by those robots has to be sent down using drillng pipes which is lowered painstakingly.

I wouldn't want to be any of the engineers trying to solve this tangled mess, with my bosses breathing down my neck because every day the pressure on them is growing exponentially...!

At the same time, this cannot be an unsolvable problem - it was just neglected all this while. I guess if given a time frame of 3-5 years there could be built an almost fool-proof method of capping such ruptured pipes with robots tailor-made for the need. They should have anticipated this and started that work 20 years ago !

As it stands, if it really takes anywhere close to that time, all our 'blue seas' might be a thing of the past .

[Tom Slick]

Too bad Red Adair isn't still around, he'd know what to do!!

[jackellis]

Radhak is correct about how difficult it is to cap the flow. That oil is under a lot of pressure and stopping it above ground is pretty challenging, let alone under the sea surface where the water pressure is something like 2400 PSI. Don't believe what you see in the movies - it's got to be tougher than it looks.

I could explain how to fix this mess but it is going to take time and cost fistfuls of money, and no one will be pleased about that.

It strikes me dumb how governors of states affected by the BP spill are outraged by the environmental damage one minute and beating on the Feds to remove the deepwater drilling moratorium the next. Perhaps it's because I'm an engineer and we have certain character defects like a propensity to be rational, but it seems to me the sane thing to do is get a better grip on the risks and how to mitigate them before we allow more drilling in really deep water. There's plenty of oil around at the moment, so it's a matter of price, not supply.

But hey, I work in the electricity business so what do I know about oil?

I wonder what Loring has to say? He's the resident expert on this topic.

[phi1l]

From what I understand, the biggest problem is that when they drilled the well, they didn't properly grout the casing, so now they are afraid that if they stop the flow at the BOP, would & gas will leak out into other strata at higher levels & then eventually work its way to the sea bed at many other locations at over a large area that would be impossible to contain. So they are limited in what they can do with out fear of creating a much worse problem. The only real solution is sealing it with grout from the bottom, & contain what comes out as best they can in the mean time. I think they could have done a better job of fitting the cap on top of the riser pipe, so that they catch more of what is leaking at that point.