Posted on 05/27/2010 12:05:47 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
British Petroleum and the federal government are both claiming victory today after an experimental process to stop the flow of oil from a blowout in the Gulf appears to have succeeded. The “top kill” process dumped mud into the broken pipe, effectively snuffing out the spewing of thousands of barrels of oil (via Instapundit):
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, Adm. Thad Allen, said Thursday morning.
The so-called “top kill” effort, launched Wednesday afternoon by industry and government engineers in Houston, has pumped enough drilling fluid to block all oil and gas from the well, Allen said. The pressure from the well is very low, but persistent, he said.
Once engineers have reduced the well pressure to zero, they will begin to pump cement into the hole to entomb the well. To help that effort, he said, engineers are also pumping some debris into the blowout preventer at the top of the well.
That’s pretty good timing for today’s presser, but undeniably just great news altogether. It verifies a more or less speculative solution that apparently was the last guess at stopping the oil. “Top kill” had worked at much shallower depths in the past, but so had the bell cap process, too, which turned out to be unsuitable for 5,000 feet.
However, the trouble may not yet be past. The ship pumping the mud has run out of material; a second ship is on the way. The shell of mud may still blow open from the upward pressure, but that could be resolved by more applications of “top kill.”
Now all that is left is the cleanup — and that will take much, much longer than plugging the leak did. Expect this to drag on for months and perhaps years.
I am watching the live feed web cam from the broken pipes & there is still oil & gas coming out. How can it be fixed, when there is still stuff coming out.......
It spews greasy lies!
And yet, they didn’t give Bush credit when Katrina stopped blowing.
Well now you have really disillusioned me. I was just basking in the security of knowing that the Feds were experts in deep water drilling and production technology.
Those permits are supposed to facilitate regulatory processes ~ and when you tell folks up the line that's not what's happening, they usually give you the fish-eye and suggest you are not intelligent enough to comprehend the issues here.
You'll see various Obamistas over the next few months explaining why they dragged their feet and saying "but it was good for you".
It's moments like these that PROVE why not having qualified people on the job at the top of the agencies involved in the disaster is a really bad idea. Maybe James Carville can figure it out, but it seems like the Democrat party is satisfied to let one of its many "special interests" provide a guy/gal with a passing interest in the topic and then give him/her the job. They then stand around ignoring that person's performance no matter what happens. In the meantime small-business people, workers, farmers, mothers, widows, infants and children can suffer while their President takes yet another vacation somewhere.
/s
President Obama plans to extend a moratorium on new offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and on the North Slope of Alaska through the end of 2010.
Let's see if his Muslim buddies in the ME will help him with that task....
So when does the concrete get pumped in?
Once that is set, we can breathe easier I would think.
Thanks for the link
But don't jump for joy yet people, mud is highly abrasive, so now it is a race against the clock to keep pressure on the leak, not blow the BOP or manifold to pieces or erode them to the point of uselessness and pump cement down hole.
LOL....ah yes, super zero.
Obama waved his arms and parted the gulf with his gulf club.
It’s a good presentation. It helped me understand the issues considerably. Shows that Zer0 is still a l0ser. (but you knew that)
I still have my Gulf card somewhere.
"Plug the damn hole!" ... and it was plugged. That is LEADERSHIP!.
We need to start writing some new books for the Zer0 “bible”.
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