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.
Color me skeptical.
And The Messiah saw that it was plugged. And verily was he well pleased with himself.
Some people just look foolish, others speak and remove all doubt.
Thanks for the post. Very informative. Looks like there’s someone that knows what they’re doing, and none of them look like they’re from D.C. strangely enough.
“...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.”
Obama basically said in his presser today that anyone that questions his handling of this crisis is just stupid. THE MAN TRULY IS A THIN SKINNED LITTLE SOCIOPATH!
"Plug the damn hole!" ... and it was plugged. That is LEADERSHIP!.
This seems to still be the same report we've had since fairly early this morning. And, as several have said here, the supposedly live underwater video shows something still gushing into the water.
My 66: Oops on the double post.
They may have already pumped the cement and are continuing to pump the mud to apply back pressure until the plug hardens. It may go on for a day or so.
“If the “top kill” works now it would have worked a day after the blow”
Sigh.....here’s 355 or so posts and links to answer that question.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2522179/posts
And your petroleum engineering degree is from where?
It is drilling mud. I don’t think BP would allow the rumors of them killing the well to persist if there were videos streaming around the world that said otherwise.
BP should have used the thickest and densest dirt which is spewed comes from DC.
There’s a link upthread that takes you to a briefing by a gentleman I assume is a BP engineer. He explains it all. Maybe I misunderstood him on this point.
I don’t know, LOL, but it seems all they have there is hot air.
agreed
I'm relying on something much simpler: reading. If you can show me that these reports are new reports, and not the same one from Thad Allen that have been around since early am, then provide a link.
Do you have some story on this more recent this early this morning and what Admiral Allen had to say? I hope I'm overlooking a new story with new information from this afternoon.
There are so many holes to plug still:
Pelosi, Reid, Holder, Waxman, Clinton, Obama ...
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