Posted on 05/22/2010 6:51:24 AM PDT by valkyry1
Believing that this would stop the well is naive.
O’Biden is milking this oil derrick crisis.. for all its worth..
20 times larger than the Exxon Valdez would not be half as big as the previous largest oil spill from the Iraq withdraw from Kuwait.
Yhey did not mention the Ixtoc well in 1979, either, which blew for nine months before it was under control. Projections for this well are in the realm of far less than half of that time frame, although the jury is still out on that.
It is a pity this tripe passes for journalism, especially when there is sufficient evidence of critical thinking impairment in the population that I suspect half the people out there could be convinced by sufficient hype to have their nostrils removed to prevent the 'destruction of entire forests' for tissues.
Anyone can downplay this as much as they want to but there is somewhere in the range of 50,000 barrels of oil daily flowing into the Gulf.
It has made its way into the Gulf Stream (first time in my life I have heard it referred to as the “current loop”) where it will devastate beaches and reefs around Cuba and the Florida keys and then end up near Iceland on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
We best hope they figure out how to get it stopped before August. The Russians are concerned enough about it that they are suggesting that a bore hole be put down next to the well and detonate a small nuclear weapon in it to crush the well off and stop the flow, a technique they say they have used 5 time in the past to stop out of control wells.
Zero and his thugs are running cover for BP, there is no telling what the real truth is. He could care less because he is out to destroy the country anyway
This is not your run of the mill oil spill.
Cool! Do you have even one example of where an oil well has been controlled usin this method?
Believing that this would stop the well is naive.
You're naive if you think it's impossible to permanently cap crimp demolish that well...rather than drilling relief wells to keep that well alive due to BPs millions invested in it.
At minimum I would like to see the idea discussed out in the open by experts
Link
For more than 100 years, explosives have been used to break the necks of runaway oil wells, snapping the long, narrow columns and sealing them shut with tons and tons of rock. Over the last several days, our 24-hour news cycle has pumped us full of excruciating details about the failed efforts to siphon, cap off, and ultimately recover the oil that is gushing into the Gulf. The latest nonsense and false hope, a mile-long pipe designed to divert some of the oil flow, is like putting a 4-inch straw into a 22-inch-diameter fire hose. It's a sordid attempt by BP at drinking its own milkshake. But the problem with this disaster response is that the ideas BP has brought to the table all seem to ignore the simplest solution: permanently destroying the well.The ideas BP has brought to the table all seem to ignore the simplest solution: permanently destroying the well.
BP’s incentives are obvious. A deep-sea oil well costs hundreds of millions of dollars to drill, so the company prefers to bumble through never-before-tried recovery efforts than destroy its investment. Furthermore, BP is probably hedging its bets—if it loses this well, lawmakers will likely ban it from drilling there again. In other words, if BP loses the well, it loses both the enormous sunk costs of drilling it and the expected cash flow from all the remaining oil. Thus, even in the midst of this crisis, BP appears to be just as concerned with protecting its shareholders as with stopping this catastrophe.
Enough is enough. It’s time to destroy the well and put the matter to rest.
I smell coverup. With all its resources (satellites, planes, ships, numerous agencies, etc.), how is it that the government did not know the potential extent of this devastating spill? Could it be that BP, being a top contributor to Obama, had something to do with the slow release of information?
We have Captain Obvious and Captain Hyperbole. With Obama I suggest we need a Captain Corruption! ;)
According to this guy’s figures, there has been about 200,000,000 (200 million) gallons spilled into the gulf. One cubic foot will contain 7.5 gallons of fluid. One acre of land filled to the depth of one foot (i.e., one acre-foot) will contain 325,000 gallons of fluid. Therefore, all the oil spilled thus far would fit on 615 acres of land filled to a depth of one foot. This is less than one square mile (640 acres).
The gulf covers 615,000 square miles.
The well site is over 5,000 feet down.
A one-acre column of water 5,000 feet deep could contain 1.6 billion gallons of oil.
Of course, the oil is going to spread way beyond, but the gulf is a big place, and this is a very, very small fraction of the total contents.
Oh yeah, the Russians have a stellar track record when it comes to environmental remediation. NOT!
First off, this isn't a "spill", it is a blowout.
Second, there have been blowouts before, and according to the current crop of environmentalists, we all died.
Oh wait, that didn't happen, did it?
Google the Ixtoc well blowout in 1979, which was worse (even if it happened further south) and went on for 9 months before the well was shut in.
BP has two relief wells being drilled now. One spudded on the 4th of May, one on the 17th, and the estimate of time to complete those wells to intersect the existing wellbore on this one at 16000 ft depth is roughly 90 days. It may take more, it may take less, but that is still one third of the time it took to bring the Ixtoc under control.
What I don't get is that everyone is dashing hither and yon howling about nuking the well, when no one is bringing up that that might cause a pressure wave in the reservoir, like a super frac, which might rupture tha caprock and make things worse.
Right now there is one well, out of control. Imagine how much fun it would be to have a dozen high pressure seeps which have no casing, no place to attach a wellhead, and no wellbore to try to drill into with a relief well.
Where do you get the 50,000 bbl of oil per day figure, anyway? (Most of the very best oil wells in the world only produce about 1/5 of that, and this one hasn't even been fracced.)
Cool! Do you have even one example of where an oil well has been controlled using this method?>>>>>>>>
Explosives have only capped wells above ground as far as I know. There is stuff on the internet claiming the Russians used nukes to cap oil wells that got into trouble
Some people are overplaying it like a Global Kill Event, but others like Rush are downplaying it way too much.
The truth is in the middle, but as usual the hot potato game makes it opaque...not to mention there seems to be a lack of clear information.
At issue is not saving the well, but controlling it for the purpose of plugging the well so that it will remain that way.
Wild-eyed calls for destruction of the wellbore whether by nuclear or conventional means all require drilling down beside the wellbore, which is what relief wells do.
Imagine keeping a six inch drill string in a 4 foot layer for two miles. It is done daily, and often the location of the layer is inferred from data as the well is being drilled.
How much easier it must be to hit a target where the survey data is known, relative position is known (within a few inches), and the geology is known.
The relief wells won't be wildcats.
Wells in the oil industry, even at the end of their life as oil wells, aren't "cap drimp demolished", they are plugged with cement plugs. Explosions are used to enable production, not stop it.
Maybe you need to go back and watch the Hellfighters--they used explosives to snuff out the flames by consuming oxygen (still a viable technique), but the well was controlled by installing valves on the wellhead.
The relief wells will permit the well to be plugged, and relief wells have been used before.
Right now there is one well, out of control. Imagine how much fun it would be to have a dozen high pressure seeps which have no casing, no place to attach a wellhead, and no wellbore to try to drill into with a r
Forget nukes. How about four holes drilled next to the well...go down 300 ft on each. Detonate four explosives to crimp shut, to collapse the well from four different directions. I hear conflicting reports but that's basalt down there...so I hear
During two months of BP drilling relief wells all the fish and oyster grounds in the Gulf will be destroyed. So will fish spawning grounds near shore. Those food resources are worth billions... worth a lot more than one BP well which needs to be destroyed permanently
Does anyone know the spill rate/volume of the Mexico Premex event in the Gulf of Mexico back in I believe the 80s or maybe the 70s? It was less severe in amounts I believe.
Imagine keeping a six inch drill string in a 4 foot layer for two miles. It is done daily, and often the location of the layer is inferred from data as the well is being drille
The wild eyed approach is to trust in relief wells for two months while valuable fishing grounds get ruined for decades
Instead of two months it would take two weeks to drill three, four holes 300-500 ft down next to the gusher well. Then insert explosives to collapse the well
That's only half the story. If BP did demolish the well the way I propose it would not be able to drill a new well there for a long time. BP's name is dirt right now. All drilling is stopped now anyway in the Gulf....right now at least
With the two relief wells being drilled BP keeps its foot in the door to get the oil out of this reservoir
Aren't those two relief wells the ones being drilled in the Gulf at the moment?
The last I read the well was blowing 5 to 50 thousand
barrels per day at 42? gallons per barrel,,,
Maybe the “Top Kill” will work,,,(Sunday),,,
If it don’t I guess we can just let it blow like some here
think,,,
After all it’s only a little “leak”,,,
It will be gone in a few years,,,
I’m sure they can get by without seafood from the Gulf...
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