BP Top Kill fails... NOW What?

[MA-Caver]

ROBERT, La. – BP admitted defeat Saturday in its attempt to plug the Gulf of Mexico oil leak by pumping mud into a busted well, but said it's readying yet another approach to fight the spill after a series of failures.
BP PLC [COLOR=#366388 ! important][COLOR=#366388 ! important]Chief [COLOR=#366388 ! important]Operating [/COLOR][COLOR=#366388 ! important]Officer [/COLOR][COLOR=#366388 ! important]Doug [/COLOR][COLOR=#366388 ! important]Suttles[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR] said the company determined the "top kill" had failed after it spent three days pumping heavy drilling mud into the crippled well 5,000 feet underwater. More than 1.2 million gallons of mud was used, but most of it escaped out of the damaged riser.
In the six weeks since the spill began, the company has failed in each attempt to stop the gusher, as [COLOR=#366388 ! important][COLOR=#366388 ! important]estimates [COLOR=#366388 ! important]of [/COLOR][COLOR=#366388 ! important]how [/COLOR][COLOR=#366388 ! important]much[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR] is leaking grow more dire. It's the worst spill in U.S. history — exceeding even the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 off the Alaska coast — dumping between 18 million and 40 million gallons into the Gulf, according to government estimates.
"This scares everybody, the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven't succeeded so far," Suttles said. "Many of the things we're trying have been done on the surface before, but have never been tried at 5,000 feet."

So now the Gulf of Mexico is going to be so polluted that nothing will live in there for decades to come. Way to go Big Oil!
So what does that mean? Higher gas prices? Or will we FINALLY realize that we need to STOP relying on fossil fuels and start focusing technology on alternate energy sources.
Nah... too idealistic... there's way TOO much money still to be made from the black stuff.

SIGH!
At what cost is greed?

 

[MJS]

I have been following this a little on the news and paper. Its really a sad situation. Whats worse, but really so typical, is that it seems that there's never a backup plan or plans in effect. Why is it that only after the tragedy happens, that everyone runs around, like a chicken with their head cut off, trying to figure out what to do.

I"m certainly no expert on the matter, so I have no idea as to what other solutions there are.

 

[Sukerkin]

For alternative energy, the sources are never going to be good enough to fulfill a technological societies needs ... unless you include nuclear (fusion maybe) in the equation.

For now, it's an ecological pipe dream that is lovely in it's concept and utterly impractical in it's inception. Most particularly when it comes to transport.

There are some promising avenues if you can wait for the technology to reach maturity and if you have the real estate per person to implement them e.g. the solar powered hydrogen farm for a house and it's 'associated' low performance car.

Such schemes do work, no question. But you have to be a millionaire to implement them - and a millionaire who doesn't care to wander far from home.

If the IR panels I have heard about become viable, then home energy is a soluble problem; one that dissolves away in a flurry of on-site generation as the home can power itself day and night. That could lead to enough power to waste making hydrogen to fuel a car ... but you still run into 'range' issues.

If the panels become good enough, then maybe you could run a minimal performance car off them directly - a wonderful solution if it occurs.

Until then, we need oil and that means we need to harvest it until we seriously produce viable alternatives.

 

[OnlyAnEgg]

So now the Gulf of Mexico is going to be so polluted that nothing will live in there for decades to come. Way to go Big Oil!
So what does that mean? Higher gas prices? Or will we FINALLY realize that we need to STOP relying on fossil fuels and start focusing technology on alternate energy sources.
Nah... too idealistic... there's way TOO much money still to be made from the black stuff.

SIGH!
At what cost is greed?

Please excuse my cynicism in advance

We are humans and, by tradition, that means we won't change until we have to...well, that's actually true for all species. We, however, will live smack dab in the middle of our own feces until we have no choice but to move. We're lazy and we don't like to change. We will pursue oil until there is no more oil. We will risk it all, cause that's how we roll, yo.

As for money, there's money to be made everywhere. Soon, we'll have big wind and big geothermal and big fusion, whatever. It will all become corrupt. Such is human existance.

What is sickening is the shortsightedness we possess. How long ago was Exxon Valdez? What kind of shape is Prince William Sound in today?

[yt]aDTmjQirNcA[/yt]

 

[Bruno@MT]

They could close the the well with an underwater nuclear detonation. The soviets used to do this. I read they had at least 5 of these leaks, and the nuke was SOP.

As for energy, imo we should have stuck with nuclear reactors. Modern reactors can be built extremely safe, with no worry about creating weapons grade fuel, and very little waste. But of course the environmentalists had to crusade against anything 'nukular'.

The participation of the greens in our national government was shortlived, but long enough to kill the nuclear industry and EOL our reactors. This was of course with full support of greenpeace, who did not propose alternative solutions. They just didn't want us to use nuclear fuel. I tore up my greenpeace membership card and told them to stick it. The irony of course is that by killing off our nuclear programs, we created a deficit, which we now import from France, from a nuclear reactor close to our border.

Now, I don't want to say 'Told you so' but whenever people are arguing for de-regularization and against government oversight, this is what you should expect.

 

[Archangel M]

While not comforting...this spill is not the biggest ever in the Gulf. In 1979, a drilling rig in Mexican waters — the Ixtoc I — blew up, releasing 140 million gallons of oil.

 

[Archangel M]

If it were not for regulations forcing drilling out into the deep...deep..depths a spill like this probably wouldnt have gone on for so long.

It's easy to say "jack up the cost of gas/oil" or switch to other energy sources..but the EXACT same people would be crying about the results right along with the rest of us. A total shut off or drastic escalation in oil prices would result in havoc. Its funny to see the "Ban offshore drilling" bumper stickers on cars that run on oil, are built using petroleum products, parked in garages built with materials hauled by fuel burning vessels from trucks and trains to planes. Driven by people who wear clothes and eat food all dependent on oil to make and deliver.

I agree w/Suk. Nuclear power is really the only realistic way to switch from oil to electric based transportation. And even then it would have to be a gradual switch based on the construction of new power plants...the change over in infrastructure...etc. There will never be an "Oil today...electric tomorrow" scenario.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090605/quotes

[URL="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000200/"]Hudson

: Let's just bug out and call it even, OK? What are we talking about this for?
Ripley: I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Hudson: F***' A...
Burke: Ho-ho-hold on, hold on one second. This installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it.
Ripley: They can *bill* me.

[/URL]

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I agree w/Suk. Nuclear power is really the only realistic way to switch from oil to electric based transportation. And even then it would have to be a gradual switch based on the construction of new power plants...the change over in infrastructure...etc. There will never be an "Oil today...electric tomorrow" scenario.

There is a reason that hydrocarbon-based energy remains popular, and that reason is never addressed by tree-huggers; they prefer to pretend it does not exist.

Theoretically, one form of energy is equivalent to another, provided it can do the work. Electricity does not care what is used to generate it. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, coal, they're all the same at the delivery point where electricity is put to use in the home or industry.

The problem is twofold. First, energy sources do not store well in general, and second, they don't ramp up well to meet fluctuating demands in general.

The reason we use nuclear, hydroelectric, and coal options most often to generate electricity for the nation's electrical power grid is not just because they are plentiful or cheap, but because they store well and ramp up well. Wind, geothermal, solar, and other 'green' sources of energy do not do that. They can neither be 'ramped up' to meet fluctuating demands, nor stored easily or efficiently against future needs.

The only solution for overcoming the problem of fluctuating demand is to build for maximum capacity, which means a large part of the money for infrastructure goes to build capacity that will only be used a fraction of the time - more wind turbines than needed, more wells than needed, more solar panels than needed, etc. That makes these 'green' options far less economically advantageous; but you won't hear that from tree-huggers; they like to quote the 1:1 costs of a solar watt versus a hydrocarbon watt as if that were actually the comparison that would be made when building a solar power plant or a coal-burning plant.

As for storage, that's a bigger problem. Currently-popular power generation is able to overcome it by generating power on-demand and not storing it for any significant periods of time. Storage methods remain inefficient; chemical (battery) or thermal (heating large objects) or mechanical (spinning up huge wheels) and then attempting to turn them back into electricity when demanded. The loss is staggering, reducing the efficiencies of 'green' power sources even more.

And that's just for home and industrial use of electricity. When it comes to automobiles, one is likewise faced with the issues of energy storage.

One potential solution for overcoming this issue is a basic and complete reordering of society; necessary because our nation (and many other Western nations) have grown up around the notion of cheap and reliable personal transportation, available on-demand and able to produce ad-hoc destinations equally easily. It it not just our psyches that are used to jumping in the car and going where we will; our infrastructure and the distribution of cities, suburbs, towns, and villages also depends upon it. It could be changed, but not without a massive reordering of how our world functions, where people live, and how they get from place to place.

Another potential solution for overcoming the issue is to accept the place of the personal car or transportation in current Western societies and working to replace hydrocarbon internal combustion with other, 'greener' methods. This holds the most promise, as newer and more efficient battery technologies are promising, as are fuel cells and even cleaner-burning internal combustion technologies such as hydrogen (if it can be made safer). Moving from hydrocarbons to alcohol is not a solution, however, as it diverts grain production that is currently used for food for people and animals; it is only a stopgap.

In the end, I have no personal objection to the use of green technologies to provide power for cars, homes, and industry. But I also recognize that there are significant problems with power sources that cannot be ramped up to meet fluctuating demands and not stored easily once converted to power. I do not see solutions to these basic issues using the current 'green' technologies, so I do not see us moving from traditional sources of fuel, such as coal, natural gas, oil, hydroelectric, and nuclear power.

And by the way, for those who would say that hydroelectric is green, you're right; but environmentalists have always hated them because they destroy habitats, endanger wildlife, and change the natural progression of rivers, and dams are inherently dangerous to those who live below them. So green or not, they're usually hated by the tree huggers too; and of course it's not always possible to build a dam where the power is wanted; we've pretty much done them all.

 

[elder999]

They could close the the well with an underwater nuclear detonation. The soviets used to do this. I read they had at least 5 of these leaks, and the nuke was SOP..

Don't think for a minute that this isn't on the table as a possible solution at this very moment. If that decision is made, though, I doubt it can be spun to be a very popular one............

 

[Andy Moynihan]

Somebody page Adam and Jamie......

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I thought of a solution.

Consider the umbrella. Turn it upside down, shove it through the hole, then open it. If you built a gigantic metal umbrella and shoved it through the broken cut-off valve until it was clear of it, and then opened the umbrella, it would expand and go backwards trying to be pushed back out of the hole, but the struts would hold the umbrella open, and the leak would be stopped and held shut by the force of the oil trying to escape, if the material the umbrella was made of was strong enough. Akido for oil pipeline, using its own strength against it.

 

[Carol]

Sounds like they aren't planning on stopping it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100530/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill

 

[kaizasosei]

Genious Bill! Very amazing plan. I can seriously imagine it working. How did you come up with that? I was thinking of surgically slicing off the great pyramid of egypt and sinking it onto the mess.

j

 

[Big Don]

I thought of a solution.

Consider the umbrella. Turn it upside down, shove it through the hole, then open it. If you built a gigantic metal umbrella and shoved it through the broken cut-off valve until it was clear of it, and then opened the umbrella, it would expand and go backwards trying to be pushed back out of the hole, but the struts would hold the umbrella open, and the leak would be stopped and held shut by the force of the oil trying to escape, if the material the umbrella was made of was strong enough. Akido for oil pipeline, using its own strength against it.

Wouldn't a SUPERSIZED angioplasty balloon work? Simple fix if it would...

 

[Bruno@MT]

I still say nuke it. That way, there is one less nuke to keep track of (saves money). Perhaps it could even fit in the disarmament agreement, so that it is one of the nukes which would be decommissioned anyway. The soldiers and submarine crew get some valuable live training, and we get another youtube vid of an awesome underwater nuclear detonation. And if greenpeace wants to stop it by parking their boats over the well, then they'll be gone as well.

Everybody wins.


[yt]qDMUekfOR-E[/yt]

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Genious Bill! Very amazing plan. I can seriously imagine it working. How did you come up with that? I was thinking of surgically slicing off the great pyramid of egypt and sinking it onto the mess.

j

I was thinking about the hole as if it were a hole in the side of a pipe. Applying a patch to the outside is tricky, because the pressure of the oil coming out wants to push the patch off. Then I thought it would be easier if you could somehow put the patch inside the hole, because then the oil would actually be holding the patch against the hole instead of trying to peel it off with pressure.

So I thought of how you could get a patch into a hole when you're on the outside and you want the patch on the inside. I was thinking about how you can shove a rifle barrel cleaning rod down a rifle barrel with a tight patch on it, but if you shove it too far and it comes out into the chamber, the patch expands and it's really hard to get it back into the barrel again to pull it out. Then I thought if the patch was mechanical and opened up once it made it through the hole, that would be like a patch on a rifle cleaning rod, and the force of the oil trying to escape would actually drive it back against the inside of the hole, spreading the umbrella out and making it stay that way.

Realizing that the hole isn't in the side of the pipe but coming out of a broken limiter valve that is partially closed, I thought that perhaps the umbrella could open up and block the opening entirely, once it was shoved past the limiter and then opened.

I don't know if it is possible; you'd have to build it out of some stern stuff, shove it down like you were sinking a drilling rig, with remote controls to operate the umbrella arms.

But I was also thinking that something like this would work for stopping leaks in city water pipes and that sort of thing too, with a smaller umbrella. You could even use it to tap a pipe while it was in use, without shutting it off. Just mount the umbrella thing on a pipe, pierce the pipe you want to tap, shove it in, open it, and secure the new pipe to the old one with cement or welding or whatever. Like a toggle bolt works; once it is shoved through a hole, it spreads out and can be tightened down.

I just think of things like this sometimes. I'm not an engineer, I'm a programmer. I get paid to think of new ways to do stuff, and I guess I'm somewhat good at it.

 

[Bruno@MT]

I'm a programmer too, but I figure that this problem is either too complex for your approach, or mechanically unfeasible. For example, if I understand your approach correctly, you'd have to insert something up the well, but you're pushing in against the stream. The lining of the well may be very rough, and maybe not even run 100% straight. It may be impossible to block up the well like this, nevermind making the (untested) equipment and getting it ready. Btw, how deep is the well? A slender beam / pole of any significant length pushing against a thick liquid will fold / crumple if it is too long.

We may like to dump on BP for their decisions, but I don't think for a moment that their engineers are stupid. They are probably the most experienced people in this area, and I am willing to bet that if BP engineers could think of anything doable, they'd have done it by now.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I'm a programmer too, but I figure that this problem is either too complex for your approach, or mechanically unfeasible. For example, if I understand your approach correctly, you'd have to insert something up the well, but you're pushing in against the stream. The lining of the well may be very rough, and maybe not even run 100% straight. It may be impossible to block up the well like this, nevermind making the (untested) equipment and getting it ready. Btw, how deep is the well? A slender beam / pole of any significant length pushing against a thick liquid will fold / crumple if it is too long.

The blowout prevent, as I understand it, looks like this:

http://www.treesfullofmoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/blow-out-preventer-diagram.png

The oil is coming out the top, and the valves on the blowout preventer did not not fully close. The well head is 18,000 feet down (too deep for manned submarines too, btw).

So the 'umbrella' would have to be long, slender, and strong. Fortunately, materials are stronger longways than shortways. Think of a thin rapier sword piercing a person. Do it on an angle and the blade bends. Do it straight in, and it doesn't. The trick is to keep it straight. And since the umbrella would be closed going in, there would be less pressure pushing it up and out than there would be once it was opened inside the blowout preventer.

We may like to dump on BP for their decisions, but I don't think for a moment that their engineers are stupid. They are probably the most experienced people in this area, and I am willing to bet that if BP engineers could think of anything doable, they'd have done it by now.

I have not dumped on anyone, let alone the BP engineers. This is a tragedy, and it is beginning to appear that there were a chain of errors on the part of management that led to this situation; if anyone, I would tend to blame management, not the engineers.

As to the solutions their own engineers can provide, I don't doubt they're smart. And experienced, yes. But that can be a downside. Once a person is very well versed in using a hammer, everything looks like a nail; know what I mean? They have tons of procedures and engineering understanding for things that they have done before; they don't generally innovate on the fly, they plan and test over a long period of time. This is a situation they don't find themselves in often, and it requires outside-the-box thinking. I'm sure they can figure it out themselves, but in the meantime, lots of minds who are not in this discipline can also give it some thought, and there might be some original thinking that comes to the fore and might work to solve the problem.

 

[Bruno@MT]

Even a rapier is fairly 'thick' for the purposes of lengthwise pressure. If you want to reach the well head and go in, you have a width / length ratio that is insanely slender. It would also be affected by the undercurrents, you'd have to build it on-site and guide it down. I remember from structural engineering classes that slenderness can be expressed mathematically, and that past a certain point, the structure will collapse no matter what you try.

I agree that the idea is sound in principle. I just don't see it practically feasible. To be honest, it would have been a good idea if this scenario had been though out beforehand, and critical infrastructure like an emergency well cap put in place.

Btw the 'dumping on BP' comment was not targeted at you personally, it was just a remark in general towards the reporting in the media.