Sealing the oil spill in the gulf

[belovelife]

I need help, I need some huge concrete anchors, huge shutter ( like a camera) a sumarine and equipment to install this this on the valve that is spewing so much oil

 

do you think this would work I'd you had slide in locking toungue and groove

or another better shutter development

[maikeru]

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

[Eclipse Now]

Check out this email that's circulating the net.

 

My guess is that even if we can't seal the leak, this oil field doesn't have quite the volume necessary to poison the world's oceans. Can anyone in ocean biology confirm the 1 quart of oil makes 250,000 of ocean water toxic?

 

"Heard your mention of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this morning, and you (and most everyone else except maybe George Noory) are totally missing the boat on how big and bad of a disaster this is.

 

First fact, the original estimate was about 5,000 gallons of oil a day spilling into the ocean. Now they're saying 200,000 gallons a day. That's over a million gallons of crude oil a week!

 

I'm engineer with 25 y ears of experience. I've worked on some big projects with big machines. Maybe that's why this mess is so clear to me.

 

First, the BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. This it right on the edge of what human technology can do. Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it.

 

When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean.

 

Now they've got a hole in the ocean floor, 5,000 feet down with a wrecked oil drilling rig sitting on top of is spewing 20 0,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Take a moment and consider that, will you!

 

First they have to get the oil rig off the hole to get at it in order to try to cap it. Do you know the level of effort it will take to move that wrecked oil rig, sitting under 5,000 feet of water? That operation alone would take years and hundreds of millions to accomplish. Then, how do you cap that hole in the muddy ocean floor? There just is no way. No way.

 

The only piece of human technology that might address this is a nuclear bomb. I'm not kidding. If they put a nuke down there in the right spot it might seal up the hole. Nothing short of that will work.

 

If we can't cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?

 

We're so used to our politicians creating false crises to fo rward their criminal agendas that we aren't recognizing that we're staring straight into possibly the greatest disaster mankind will ever see. Imagine what happens if that oil keeps flowing until it destroys all life in the oceans of this planet. Who knows how big of a reservoir of oil is down there.

 

Not to mention that the oceans are critical to maintaining the proper oxygen level in the atmosphere for human life.

 

We're humped. Unless God steps in and fixes this. No human can. You can be sure of that!

[JMJones0424]

Don't know about the veracity of the rest of the email, but it appears the writer's hunch on what caused the explosion is incorrect-

 

I caught the tail end of an interview that was originally broadcast on 60 minutes while watching MSNBC. According to the person interviewed, the reason for the blowout was a series of mishaps due to pressure from BP on the Deep Water Horizon drilling team to try to meet deadlines.

 

Most importantly:

Down near the seabed is the blowout preventer, or BOP. It's used to seal the well shut in order to test the pressure and integrity of the well, and, in case of a blowout, it's the crew's only hope. A key component is a rubber gasket at the top called an "annular," which can close tightly around the drill pipe.

 

Williams says, during a test, they closed the gasket. But while it was shut tight, a crewman on deck accidentally nudged a joystick, applying hundreds of thousands of pounds of force, and moving 15 feet of drill pipe through the closed blowout preventer. Later, a man monitoring drilling fluid rising to the top made a troubling find.

 

"He discovered chunks of rubber in the drilling fluid. He thought it was important enough to gather this double handful of chunks of rubber and bring them into the driller shack. I recall asking the supervisor if this was out of the ordinary. And he says, 'Oh, it's no big deal.' And I thought, 'How can it be not a big deal? There's chunks of our seal is now missing,'" Williams told Pelley.

source

 

And now, with the BOP unable to make a complete seal, pressure tests are unreliable. Then...

In finishing the well, the plan was to have a subcontractor, Halliburton, place three concrete plugs, like corks, in the column. The Transocean manager wanted to do this with the column full of heavy drilling fluid - what drillers call "mud" - to keep the pressure down below contained. But the BP manager wanted to begin to remove the "mud" before the last plug was set. That would reduce the pressure controlling the well before the plugs were finished.

 

Asked why BP would do that, Bea told Pelley, "It expedites the subsequent steps."

...

"If the 'mud' had been left in the column, would there have been a blowout?" Pelley asked.

 

"It doesn't look like it," Bea replied.

 

To do it BP's way, they had to be absolutely certain that the first two plugs were keeping the pressure down. That life or death test was done using the blowout preventer which Mike Williams says had a damaged gasket.

souce

 

Infuriating isn't it? I am frequently amazed that the private sector repeatedly seems to ignore basic safety procedures. Coming from a military background, I am used to using checklists for everything, especially when in dangerous tasks. It doesn't matter how many times you have done something before, you always follow the checklist EXACTLY. And when it comes to safety, EVERYONE is a safety officer and has the right to call an operation when something is being done incorrectly. It appears this whole mess was entirely preventable, had the BP staff been more concerned for safety than deadlines.

[coldcreation]

Hmm, I'm not an engineer, and I've never worked with big machines (well, not that big), but there are couple things mentioned in that 'email' that seem to jive with intuition:

 

They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth.

 

 

So I did a quick search and found that the Oscar for the deepest off-shore oil production borehole goes to... Chevron.

 

They are drilling through more than 22,000 feet of shale and sediment 4,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. source

 

So the 30,000 feet mention in the quotes seems exaggerated. Unless of course BP has managed to out perform Chevron (which I cannot confirm: Does anyone know how deep that borehole is?) . Though in the final outcome it wouldn't really make to much of a difference whether the well was 22,000, 30,000 or even 10,000 feet deep, i.e., the depth makes little difference, if they can't cap it, they can't cap it. Unless there's a relation with depth and pressure, e.g., the deeper it is the more pressure is released (?).

 

Now, the Oscar for a land-based deep core-drilled geological borehole goes to: Kola Superdeep Borehole. This well was drilled to a record measured length of 12,289*metres (40,320*ft) including a record horizontal reach of 10,902*metres (35,770*ft) in 36 days only. That is deep to say the least.

 

The Tiber well discovery (about 250 miles southeast of Houston) is at a depth of more than 35,000 feet — greater than the height of Mount Everest — and well below the gulf floor, but extraction of oil has not yet begun. That record so far goes to BP. So maybe it is possible that the well in the Gulf is 30,000 feet deep. I don't know.

 

 

Oh, and I read somewhere that not 200,000 but 206,000 gallons are released into the Gulf per day. That too is a big difference since it exceed the original 5,000 gallon estimate. Either way though is still too much oil.

 

 

Finally, I'm not convinced that nuclear detonation would solve the problem, unless it turned the ocean floor into thick glass. I would think that an explosion would just open it up wider.

 

 

All I can think of right now is the F-word.

 

 

CC

[coldcreation]

The good news is that BP has successfully inserted a siphon into the damaged riser pipe from the underwater well at the heart of the spill.

 

The procedure has allowed the company to collect more than 1,000 barrels (42,000 gallons) of oil a day that would otherwise spill into the Gulf.

 

The bad news is that the well has been spewing an estimated 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day into the Gulf since late April, when the drill rig Deepwater Horizon blew up. Source.

 

 

CC

[Boerseun]

Nuke it... I like that idea.

[coldcreation]

Nuke it... I like that idea.

 

I like it too. Especially if it's the only thing that might work in the short term. Who wants to wait three years before they can move the rig off the hole so the leak can be sealed?

 

The problem with nuking is that tsunami-like surface waves can be generated that do damage to coastal areas, as well as inland damage.

 

Many underwater devices have been detonated. The WIGWAM test was carried out under Operation Wigwam in 1955. The nuclear bomb was detonated at a depth of 2000 feet. Here is the video:

 

Operation Wigwam - The Explosion Underwater http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8grR9_CJHy0

 

 

I'm not sure what effect this had on the ocean floor, probably little, since it was detonated away from the seabed. Nor do I know what size waves were generated.

 

"The heights of surface waves generated by deep underwater explosions are greater because more energy is delivered to the water... The rising gas bubble can over expand because the gas pressure falls below the pressure of the surrounding water. This causes the bubble to collapse, which causes a second shock wave and bubble." Source.

 

 

I haven't read it yet, but here appears to be an excellent source of information on The Effects of Nuclear Weapons and Underwater nuclear weapon test effects.

 

 

CC

[Moontanman]

Don't know about the veracity of the rest of the email, but it appears the writer's hunch on what caused the explosion is incorrect-

 

I caught the tail end of an interview that was originally broadcast on 60 minutes while watching MSNBC. According to the person interviewed, the reason for the blowout was a series of mishaps due to pressure from BP on the Deep Water Horizon drilling team to try to meet deadlines.

 

Most importantly:

 

source

 

And now, with the BOP unable to make a complete seal, pressure tests are unreliable. Then...

 

souce

 

Infuriating isn't it? I am frequently amazed that the private sector repeatedly seems to ignore basic safety procedures. Coming from a military background, I am used to using checklists for everything, especially when in dangerous tasks. It doesn't matter how many times you have done something before, you always follow the checklist EXACTLY. And when it comes to safety, EVERYONE is a safety officer and has the right to call an operation when something is being done incorrectly. It appears this whole mess was entirely preventable, had the BP staff been more concerned for safety than deadlines.

 

This is extremely infuriating, i used to work for DuPont, for the last few years i was a safety supervisor. We took safety very seriously, going to the bathroom was covered by a standard practice. Nothing we did wasn't covered and the job had to be done exactly the way it was written, nothing was more important than safety, BP's behavior is unconscionable. No excuse what so ever, when you think of the enormous profits being earned by the oil industry such violations to save a few bucks becomes outrageous.

[Eclipse Now]

Infuriating isn't it? I am frequently amazed that the private sector repeatedly seems to ignore basic safety procedures. Coming from a military background, I am used to using checklists for everything, especially when in dangerous tasks. It doesn't matter how many times you have done something before, you always follow the checklist EXACTLY. And when it comes to safety, EVERYONE is a safety officer and has the right to call an operation when something is being done incorrectly.

 

Gosh, I remember Basic (what Americans call Bootcamp) and how if we ended up in in the bathroom together (with lines of toilet cubicle's next to each other), we'd do our business by the "Catchphrases and numbers". You know you're in a sad place when you hear 4 or 5 grown men yelling...

 

"Paper... 2, 3..."

"Wipe... 2, 3..."

"Drop... 2, 3..."

"Paper... 2, 3..."

"Wipe... 2, 3..."

"Drop... 2, 3..."

 

I agree. Civies in this sort of situation need to get a sense of DRILL about them as they drill.

[Eclogite]

Here are a handfull of thoughts in no particular order:

 

The blow out on a Sedco rig drilling the Ixtoc well for Pemex in the Gulf in the late nineteen seventies discharged between half a million and one and a half million gallons per day for a nine month period. I don't recall the world's ocean turning toxic at that time. I am not seeking to underestimate the environmental impact of the spill, but I see no need to overestimate it either.

 

On a personal note, I visited both drilling rigs attempting to drill relief wells for Ixtoc on two occassions. The site of a roiling mass of sea thrown up into a large dome and aflame, from a distance of about half a mile was impressive, especially at night.

 

The suggestion to use a nucelar device is not novel. Also in the nineteen seventies the Russians killed two wells in Siberia by lowering such devices down the relief wells and exploding them.

 

Chunks of rubber are quite commonly found during the drilling process. These are usually sourced from the downhole drilling motors which have a rubber stator or from the pumps which move the drilling fluid. The former is generated when the motor is over torqued and stalls, resulting in 'chunking' of the stator. The rubber from pumps is less common as it is typically a sign of poor maintenance.

 

The discrepancies of depth mentioned by cold creation may be due to the distinction between TVD (True Vertical Depth) and MD (Measured Depth). On a directional well the latter can be considerably greater than the former. For example on BP's Wytch Farm field on the south coast of England, another project I was involved with, measured depths in excess of 10km were associated with vertical depths of around 1,600m.

 

My experiences as a former contractor to BP is that they take safety very seriously indeed. Indeed I would say they were one of the companies at the forefront of bringing a proper safety regime to the upstream oil industry in the 1980s. I am making no comments on the attention to safety in the current Gulf blow out, but I question the barbed comments made by one or two posters who suggest that safety is not a concern of the oil companies. In 1971 I could go offshore in the North Sea by helicopter wearing a short sleeved shirt, with zero survival training. By 1992 the same trip would require that I wore a full survival suit and, if I was more than an accompanied visitor, I would have taken a rigorous four day survival course, which included such delights as escaping from an inverted, submerged helicopter, or making ones way through a smoke filled building with no breathing apparatus.

[C1ay]

Well, I am hoping the religious community is keeping track of this as another miss since I'm sure millions, maybe billions, are praying this will just go away and so far it ain't working:evil: For your viewing enjoyment:

 

YouTube - Michael Shermer: Why people believe strange things http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T_jwq9ph8k

[belovelife]

This is extremely infuriating, i used to work for DuPont, for the last few years i was a safety supervisor. We took safety very seriously, going to the bathroom was covered by a standard practice. Nothing we did wasn't covered and the job had to be done exactly the way it was written, nothing was more important than safety, BP's behavior is unconscionable. No excuse what so ever, when you think of the enormous profits being earned by the oil industry such violations to save a few bucks becomes outrageous.

out of curiosity, did you work on their proton exchange membrane?

 

 

besides that, is nuclear detonation a real option, i mean the amount of oil spilled is extreme,

but at a nuclear detonation, how far spread is the radiation

[Moontanman]

out of curiosity, did you work on their proton exchange membrane?

 

No I worked in the Dacron polyester division.

 

besides that, is nuclear detonation a real option, i mean the amount of oil spilled is extreme,

but at a nuclear detonation, how far spread is the radiation

 

I think we should take Eclogite's lead in this for now, the iffy safety of BP has not been confirmed, having worked with a big company it does indeed upset me that BP could be so callous in it's disregard of safety but until we have real evidence of this I'll have to assume a wait and see posture.

 

it seems unlikely that nuclear detonations would be a cure all in this case, at least IMHO.

 

More info of interest.

 

http://oils.gpa.unep.org/facts/natural-sources.htm

 

NOAA describe a natural seepage area in California: "One of the best-known areas where this happens is Coal Oil Point along the California Coast near Santa Barbara. An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 gallons of crude oil is released naturally from the ocean bottom every day just a few miles offshore from this beach".

[belovelife]

what is the potential for accounting for the thermal expantion of metals and fasten an apeture to the foundation then close the apeture opening

slowly so the pressure doesn't overwhealm the mechanism

[Cephalover]

I don't know that it's possible to talk about BP as disregarding safety, as if it were a person. The fact is, BP's investors and administration didn't come together and decide not to follow procedures - it was something that happened at the level of the individuals working on that specific project. All that BP as a company could have done is tightened up its hiring process to keep unsafe workers and supervisors off of field projects. This is a rather complicated and ambiguous goal.

 

That said, coming from working in an animal laboratory, it's amazing to me that people don't follow protocol when doing something that's as large-scale as an oil drill. At my workplace, we follow written protocols about what order in which to mix solutions or how to make incisions in a surgery like they were life and death (and they almost never are.) I just don't get why people working on something a million times more harmful in the case of a failure would not think that following protocol is important.

[modest]

It looks from the live feed like the saw is currently cutting off the wrecked and bent pipe (right above the lower marine riser).

 

It will be interesting to see what the flow rate looks like when the cut is complete—if it's significantly greater than it was. The cut looks about an eighth complete. Seems to be going well.

 

~modest