Posted on 05/27/2010 5:53:57 AM PDT by dennisw
Edited on 05/27/2010 6:12:15 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Reporting from Houma, La. Engineers have succeeded in stopping the flow of oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico from a gushing BP well, the federal government's top oil spill commander, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said Thursday morning.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I'm only here for another 5-6 years, after which my sons and my nephews (who we help take care of since my sister in law passed away last year...) are all off to college and I'm free to leave this God forsaken state! Gotta stay until then to help my brother with his kids.
After that, we're headed down to ... TEXAS! We've been eyeballing property in West Texas, really like the area and am currently watching while property values there continue to fall. I'll probably put an offer on something pretty soon and at least get the land taken care of. I'll worry about building something down there when my move date gets closer.
Don't worry about me bringing of these ***DAMNED yankees from up here with me, I'll be packing up in the middle of the night to make my escape when the time comes.
OMG, another nic on here I haven't seen in YEARS now ....
LOL...great to see you USC!
You just need to find SmartAleck!
you still in CHI-town area?
I hope this is true, but I have to question the timing of it. Let’s see if after the Kenyan’s press conference, they change their tune.
maybe 800 barrels to fill the BOPS...but if the mud is traveling down all 18,000 TD...they are gonna be pumping for quite a while!
Unfortunately, YES I'm still here. And I commute into the MURDER CAPITAL of the U.S. every day (Chicago) to go to work too!
It's amazing I'm still alive having commuted back and forth into the city every day for the last 20 years to work. I've gotten smarter though, and screw Chicago's handgun ban, I go packing every day to protect myself.
It's good to see you on here, I see from your posts you're still at the same place (I think?)
OK.
Sorry ... just my opinion.
No need to say sorry. I can understand some reasoning for that opinion.
However, the comparison I would make between the two is that there is no reasonable way to compare the 'time to repair' and make a judgment that BP took too long.
I don't think there is any physical way they could have done it faster, unless they just started skipping all the safety precautions and test procedures, and had a magic wand that could transport all the equipment to the site in an instant.
They haven’t even gotten the ‘cement’ to the site yet. They are pumping mud for now, which will stave off the oil, but there will still be a flow (of mostly mud) coming out until they get the cement in, and it sets up.
I definitely agree with you that what has been done to rectify this mess is nothing short of a logistical and engineering miracle but let’s not act as if BP’s hands are totally clean here. The most definitely are not!
100% on the mark in 259!
Supposedly, the 2nd largest in the world ...
“What’s topkill”
-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—
There are some cute videos out that explain this, but essentially it is flooding the oil well from the top with heavy liquid - intending to put enough pressure on the column of oil sufficient to stop it from flowing. They call the liquid “mud” and they specially formulate it to have a certain appropriate weight. To the best of my research, they are using 16 pound per gallon PPG mud here. They got something like 100,000 barrels in place before yesterday for this. They are using pumps capable of at least 16,000 psi at over 50BBL/Min on this attempt. It may have worked - fingers crossed.
This topkill was not the “typical” topkill effort, because of many things - one being its extreme depth (the water pressure itself is 2,100psi), another being the huge amount of flow from the well that was not being blocked by the existing structures (BOP, etc.), another being the huge pressure of the well and its ‘gassiness’. It has been called “the well from hell” by some.
Since the oil was flowing so massively, apparently (my best read of the professionals) they had to create an “annular seal” ABOVE the well (I guess in the BOP itself) by pumping mud in specific flow pattern and rates ... similar to the way those neat no-door freezers in grocery stores work by providing laminar flow. That hydraulically generated seal allows them to pump a SECOND stream of “kill mud” into the well, despite the lack of any solid object to push against... this streams fights against the huge flow of the oil and gas. Hopefully, sufficient kill mud gradually works its way down the well and into appropriate channels to provide sufficient weight to counter the upward flow of oil. (No mean feat... the pressure is in the tens of thousands of PSI - I have heard rumors that it may be backed up in the reservoir itself of pressures of as much as 200,000 psi.... but I can’t help wondering if that is a typo) ... BP had to carefully study as well as they could ascertain the condition of the well under the surface (there are multiple, “concentric” tubes that they put in place while drilling and the precise path the oil was taking was critical to WHERE they injected the kill mud... guess wrong and not only would the topkill fail, but at their pumping pressures of upwards of 10,000 psi they could rapidly destroy some of that and make the problem much worse.)
Anyway - I probably said more than you asked here, and I may not be precisely accurate in what BP has been doing- but if I am wrong in the details, I at least am not wrong in the way I am conveying how Herculean this effort is.
So is the occupant of the People’s House.
We are all on the same team. Give its apparent success, I had been curious about why this option was not tried earlier, if it was at least planned conceptually.... concerned that oil execs put company profits way too far ahead of this solution, a decison not in the control of either planners or engineers
You might be interested in this discussion of this same topic
Von Moltke was wrong, BTW, he had no idea of the adaptation and resiliance of modern military planning, and the innovation of the US military
APNewsBreak: New, giant sea oil plume seen in Gulf
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_oil_spill_new_plume
LOL! Next time you get down this way give me a shout and we’ll try to get together and discuss old times!
YUP I still live in Houston and still work for Cudd Energy Services
TRUE. BP will end up being the sacrificial lamb. The reason they were allowed to 'skip' or 'skimp' on the job procedures, was not to save BP money. It was to get the well online so that the company taking over the PRODUCTION on the well could benefit, and so the administration could claim it had solved the US oil problem.
Those 'experts' in DC got in a bit of a rush, wanted BP out of there, and the well in PRODUCTION.
That is the cause of this disaster. But BP will get the blame and has already spent over $800 million on this. That doesn't include the price of turning the relief wells into production,nor the lost drilling platform.
Obama and crew screwed themselves, and the public, and BP. What a crew.
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