Bp's Top Kill Effort Fails To Plug Gulf Oil Leak, USAToday - May 29, 2010 Options

[rob balsamo]

ROBERT, La. (AP) — 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 preparing yet another method to fight the spill after a series of failures.

BP PLC Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said the company determined the "top kill" method had failed after after it spent three days pumping heavy drilling mud into the crippled well 5,000 feet underwater.

"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."

It was the latest setback for the company casting about for ways to stop the crude from further fouling waters, wildlife and marshland. A 100-ton box placed over the leak failed after ice-like crystals clogged it, while a mile-long tube that sucked more than 900,000 gallons of oil from the gusher was removed to make way for the top kill.



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[lunk]

Pour gravel on the whole gusher untill there is a cone of gravel built up over the whole gusher and debris.
pour cement, starting at the base of that cone, around and up, and encase the whole thing towards the apex,
then funnel and pipe all the oil, from the top.
that's how i would solve this problem,
...long ago.

[tnemelckram]

I'd like to see exactly how these oil companies phrased whatever assurances they gave the government that the risks of this were minimal and/or if it occurred, there was a ready way to deal with it.

As I understand it, this happened because because the oil was under many-fold times the pressure they thought from natural gasses also in the deposit so when they struck it the equipment was not strong enough to resist it.

Well, I'm no roughneck but I think that both 5000 feet below the ocean or on land that is known as a "gusher". On land it's actually good news because the oil under pressure is easier to extract and bring up to the surface. The point being that not only has it happened many times before on land over the last 150 years, it is recognized as a desirable thing. So it was certain that this was going to happen eventually in the ocean.

We are land creatures, not sea creatures. But this is 5000 feet down where most sea creatures don't live. On land once the land creatures get done celebrating like Jimmy Dean in Giant the "gusher" is easily accessible for them to contain and recover from their error in underestimating the pressure of the deposit. There are established procedure for that which have been developed and tested over and over again for 150 years so is actually all routine. But 5000 feet below the ocean is not so easily accessible which further means that we are newly drilling down there without any experience instead of doing something that is routine on land.

Now with this third failure it is obvious that they are stumbling around and unlike on land, never had any idea of what to do when they hit the inevitable "gusher" 5000 feet below the ocean. During the permitting process, did they try to claim that "gushers" have never occurred, or would not occur in deep ocean, or falsely present the odds of this event? Or did they concede that "gushers" would be just as commonplace as on land, but claim that they were just as easy to deal using the same proven land methods, or claim that they had developed specific new methods and give specific reasons why they were confident that they would be equally effective, even without any actual experience?

The most plausible is they conceded there would be "gushers" but pitched specific new methods as being sure to work as quickly and easily as on land. Now it is obvious that they had no basis for this claim and odds are they falsely claimed that some method existed which they had specific reasons to be confident of.

This post has been edited by tnemelckram: May 29 2010, 11:56 PM

[tnemelckram]

Well here's a partial answer to the question I asked in the above Post:

Link: http://www.truthout.org/ex-epa-officials-w...estigation59936

Money quote:

Boxer and six other senators who are members of the Environment and Public Works panel wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder May 17 requesting that he launch a "inquiry" to determine whether BP lied to the federal government about whether it could adequately respond to oil spills in the Gulf.

The senators' letter cited a February 2009 document BP sent to federal regulators that said, "in the event of an unanticipated blowout resulting in an oil spill, it is unlikely to have an impact based on the industry wide standards for using proven equipment and technology for such responses, implementation of BP's Regional Oil Spill Response Plan which address available equipment and personnel, techniques for containment and recovery and removal of the oil spill."

But on May 10, BP released a statement that said the "techniques being attempted or evaluated to contain the flow of oil on the seabed involve significant uncertainties because they have not been tested in these conditions before."

[lunk]

BP should be removed from the problem,
or it wont be fixed.

Sorry, for using the word "gusher",
it is my made up term that should be thought of,
as just a leak

...of perhaps, a 100,000 barrels per day,
more or less.

[albertchampion]

another volume for my memoirs. this one entitled, I DON'T GET IT!

i have been involved in the oil & gas industry all my life. the prevarications, deliberate misunderstandings, concerning this catastrophe take my breath away.

there has never been any chance of corking this "hole". anyone telling you it could be corked has been lying. there has never been any chance of overcoming the wellbore pressures. and everyone in the industry knows that. there is this site, the oil drum, that would make you think that this well could be "corked". i wonder what background those individuals have.

has it been theater? or wishing and hoping? i think that the exit pressures from this "gasser" exceed anything that any pumps can force down its throat. and that is what has been learned today.

and that was what was known weeks ago. by BP. and the USG. neither of those entities wanted to tell the residents of the gulf coast that the world as they had known it was going to be murdered.

just remember, virtually everyone wants to continue to label this a "spill". it ain't a "spill". never has been a "spill".

one of the more salient issues now is, how many vents are there into this reservoir?

is it a single, uncontrolled "straw"? or are their other fractures created by well-bore logging?

will any enforcement entity seize all the records of this puncturing of this reservoir?

will any enforcement entity start seizing those individuals who are responsible?

i heard barry obombya respond to helen thomas during his presser. she asked him why the invasion of afghanistan and when would it end.

his response in his baritone was that "al fresco" had to be confronted....after all, it was responsible for the deaths of 3,000 us citizens.

and helen was not allowed a second chance. never forget, helen is of lebanese origin. and i think that she recognizes the fraud that the usg has perpetrated concerning that day in september, 2001.

[dMz]

Well, I'm no roughneck but I think that both 5000 feet below the ocean or on land that is known as a "gusher". On land it's actually good news because the oil under pressure is easier to extract and bring up to the surface. The point being that not only has it happened many times before on land over the last 150 years, it is recognized as a desirable thing. So it was certain that this was going to happen eventually in the ocean.

We are land creatures, not sea creatures. But this is 5000 feet down where most sea creatures don't live.

Forgive my editing TN (and I have some diving experience/training here), and I suspect that AC will concur with my assertions here, but at -5000 feet MSL:

dude- you are BEYOND fucked!

My [liberal] sister had an interesting proposal earlier tonight while we were watching Rachel Madddow on MSNBC:

Someone needs to invest in/develop a tubular "cannon" so that we can launch the worthless US Senators RIGHT THE FUCK INTO/DOWN that oil-gusher...

I don't necessarily agree with the physics of the whole thing, but...

(IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/thumbsup.gif)

[lunk]

Considering that this is a global catastrophe, in the making.

All known information,
well depth, bore hole size, and pressures
oil reservoir size, and exact schematics of the drill sites must be made known fully to the public.

Technological proprietary rights of a company must go,
in this case.
All BP's data on what they did, that lead up to this,
must be made public, and not kept hidden, by BP,
or governments.

This means nothing less than a full, complete, disclosure on everything leading up to, and after, this catastrophe.

If this is not done, immediately,
then one can only conclude,
that this was intentional, and planned.

This is an extinction level event.

[tnemelckram]

AWWRIGHT, it looks like all you people, Albert, Lunk, Rob and Dmole, are getting too close to the truth need need a little distraction. So Let's Play Movie Trivia!

What movie do these quotes, apropos the situation, come from?

!. "I'm - a - rich . . .I'm-a rich boy".

2. "It looks like the self-destruct mechanism malfunctioned and blew itself up".

The winner gets a coupon for a free salad with vinegar and oil dressing.

EDIT TO ADD: This little entertainment brought to you by the British Petroleum Corporation, as part of its never-ending quest to
make your life seem better no matter what.
Tnemelckram
Vice President, Public Relations

This post has been edited by tnemelckram: May 30 2010, 12:37 PM

[Ricochet]

They are stalling for time. The 3 month mark was set from the begining, they need to look like they are doing something about this. Clearly they are not succeeding unless abject failure was the goal. Why August? Somrthing big is about to happen, bigger than the release of untold millions of barrels of oil. We've been had.

Just after posting this I came across this article.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/30/bp-sa.../us+(Text+-+US)

They have thrown in the towel.

This post has been edited by Ricochet: May 30 2010, 02:35 PM

[GroundPounder]

truth is always wanted, as long as the fact agree..there's the problem. what are the facts?

a couple of frames (undoctored?) of the pentagon on 9/11..the 'magic' bullet. on and on ad nauseum.

how about a real live feed from the leak for starters, hmm? too much to ask? do we need to beg?
please your majesty, let me see what is happening...whatever.

addenda: lunk's idea of the band-aid has merit imho.

This post has been edited by GroundPounder: May 30 2010, 03:20 PM

[DoYouEverWonder]

Time to start sucking this stuff up. Literally!

There is no reason why they can't do this.

You set up three different teams.

1. Instead of burning off the stuff on the top, start sucking it up instead. Pull out the water and you've got marketable oil again.

2. Try to capture as much as possible coming directly out of the well. That doesn't mean you have to even attach anything to the well head. Just send down some tubes, like straws that are positioned at the top of the plume billowing out instead. You won't capture it all and it will have a fair amount of water mixed in, but if you really tried I bet you could capture a lot of it.

3. Stop using dispersants so the oil can stay together and start sucking out the oil in the plumes.

Now here's the problem. You've got to get empty tankers, so the ones out there will have to dump their loads on the market. Then you've got to separate the water and crap out, so that just made the oil that's extracted cost more but they're can't charge more because now they've got a serious glut all of a sudden. Of course, none of this would be in the self interest of Big Oil because now that we are literally swimming in this stuff the prices will drop. What a shame.

[GroundPounder]

1. Instead of burning off the stuff on the top, start sucking it up instead. Pull out the water and you've got marketable oil again.

2. Try to capture as much as possible coming directly out of the well. That doesn't mean you have to even attach anything to the well head. Just send down some tubes, like straws that are positioned at the top of the plume billowing out instead. You won't capture it all and it will have a fair amount of water mixed in, but if you really tried I bet you could capture a lot of it.

3. Stop using dispersants so the oil can stay together and start sucking out the oil in the plumes.

makes we wonder why it's not being done?? like the man said, common sense ain't all that common, or something else is brewing?!

[tnemelckram]

DYEW lists a number of sensible ideas and then says:

Now here's the problem. You've got to get empty tankers, so the ones out there will have to dump their loads on the market. Then you've got to separate the water and crap out, so that just made the oil that's extracted cost more but they're can't charge more because now they've got a serious glut all of a sudden. Of course, none of this would be in the self interest of Big Oil because now that we are literally swimming in this stuff the prices will drop. What a shame.

DYEW hits the nail on the head. That's about the size of it.

[albertchampion]

amongst almost all of my former "friends", classmates, i realized a long time ago that they thought me to be an "alien". as they would say, "how is it that you see things so differently than anyone else".

my response was always, "my brain is connected to my eyeballs." and i read. and i study history[which is the study of causality].

anyway, considering this "hydrocarbon volcano" in the gulf of mexico[notice that i don't call it a "spill"], i continue to be astonished as to how it is that so many are genuflecting to the "christmas tree"[aka the hydrocarbon extraction industry].

matty simmons got it accurately, i think....when he related that he has been dismayed by the USG's and BP's refusal to vacuum up the outflow of liquid hydrocarbons. you can almost detect a tone in his assessment of the situation that he thinks it another instance of LET IT HAPPEN. as if the objective is to kill all marine life in the gulf of mexico. makes one wonder if barry obombya's friends at goldman have shrimp, crab, snapper, pompano futures instruments. and they aren't "shorting" shrimp, crab, snapper, pompano.

seafood derivatives? hmmmmm. wouldn't surprise me. would it surprise you?

well, that thought might be a digression.

but it was educational this afternoon to view an interview of the former president of shell oil usa, a john hofmeister. who has written a book entitled "why we hate the oil companies".

if you had listened to hofmeister and the interviewer, and you knew anything about the hydrocarbon extraction industry, i think you might have wondered why it was that this cspan booknotes interviewer had his lips planted so firmly up hofmeister's bung hole.

royal dutch shell[for whom hofmeister worked] may be the most energetic polluter on this planet. apparently the interviewer knows nothing of shell's decades long hydrocarbon extraction activities in the niger delta. an area where royal dutch shell has had no qualms killing scores of thousands of the inhabitants of that region so as to extract bonnie light for next to no cost[other than the costs of bribing of nigerian politicians].

royal dutch shell. an interesting outfit. essentially owned by the royal house of orange[netherlands] and the royal house of saxe-coburg gotha[renamed windsor]. the grand imperialists.

follow the hydrocarbon extraction history of royal dutch shell. i think you might see that john hofmeister has no credibility as a friend of the planet.

the most interesting history of royal dutch shell was its activities in supplying refined hydrocarbons to north vietnam throughout that invasion. had it not been for royal dutch shell, the us invasion would have succeeded.

of course the royal dutch shell supply arrangement was known to the usa. and no efforts were implemented to shut it down.

and finally, we get to the role of the house of orange in establishing the global control organization known as the bilderberg group. was it that group that determined that the invasion of vietnam was to be a virtually forever military conflict.? enriching all the bilderbergers?

i make no apologies for thinking like an alien. cui bono[to whose benefit] remains the analytical armature when assessing events.

closing, does anyone else extrapolate that a dead gulf of mexico would be a wonderful thing for the hydrocarbon extraction industry? after all, a dead gulf would be the rationale for the cessation of all permitting strictures[i.e, drill anywhere at anytime you want....you cannot do anymore damage now].

and a dead, stinking gulf and the death of beachfront properties would surely solve the problems of hurricane/tropical storm damage and insurance coverage[often backed by the usg].

late night thoughts.

for your consideration.

[mrodway]

makes we wonder why it's not being done?? like the man said, common sense ain't all that common, or something else is brewing?!

I'd say the goal is to create a lot of public outrage so that the Obama puppet is able to place restrictions on future drilling and drive up the price of Oil.

It's not like they don't know what the outcome is going to be :-

Rachel Maddow- The more spills change_ the more they stay the same
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo

[lunk]

I'd say the goal is to create a lot of public outrage so that the Obama puppet is able to place restrictions on future drilling and drive up the price of Oil.

It's not like they don't know what the outcome is going to be :-

Rachel Maddow- The more spills change_ the more they stay the same
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo

They have a stage play to follow.
Perhaps the technology has advanced enough,
that they can drill the relief wells faster.

oil calms water
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00PPPt7EJqo

So perhaps hurricanes might behave differently, over oily waters:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Henri_%281979%29

[Ricochet]

I'd say the goal is to create a lot of public outrage so that the Obama puppet is able to place restrictions on future drilling and drive up the price of Oil.

It's not like they don't know what the outcome is going to be :-

Rachel Maddow- The more spills change_ the more they stay the same
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo

I think you are wrong to the extent that this is not a spill. It is an unprecedented event. Thet don't know what the outcome is going to be. Oil plumes are not like spills which stay on top of the water for the most part. The plumes that are happening are broken up oil droplets suspended in the seawater, Corexit 9500 is doing a superb job of this whilst adding an extra kick for killing marine life. If the desired effect was to create dead zones then mission accomplished. A ban of repoprting from the area surounding the hemmoraging well seems to be contained by both the government and BP, too bad the oil'gas/methane and everything else spewing from the earth wasn't so well looked after. Surface collection has all but stopped due to the volunteer fishermen getting sick from the toxic shit BP refuses to stop spraying. That fascist rat bastard at the top of the criminal DC food chain has probably been read the riot act, don't rock the fucking boat or you will get the JFK treatment. Nothing else could explain why they would let BP still run this dog and pony show. Face facts as of now the Gulf of Mexico is dead. How much more of the world's oceans must die before we take action to stop these fuckers.

[lunk]

live feed,
of oil gushing out sideways from a pipe,

watch for fish:

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/g...rov_stream.html

(live feed courtesy of bp)

(edit) added
if that is a 20 inch pipe, i'd estimate it would fill a barrel every 5 seconds.
12 barrels / minute,
=720 / hour,
=17,280 barrels per day,
from this one, broken pipe.

[albertchampion]

from a friend. within the last hour.

no gulf seafood being delivered to restaurants starting tuesday.