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.
Ahhh, sorry I misread your post. If FR had a dollar for everytime a poster asked "Why wasn't this done on day one?" we could be Freepathon free for a year. Didn't mean to jump on you Toby.
To gubment just stood by and said, “Will this work? why isn’t this working? I have a meeting. Can I get a good cup of coffee here? i am going to lunch. Why isn’t it working? We need to do a study. There ought to be a law. Is it working?”
And so on, and so on.
This is happening in New Orleans' back yard... Of course they're speaking too soon.
And Hussein picks THIS day for his first presser in a year? No doubt just a coincidence!!!
It's pretty impressive.
I still LOVE to burn my relatively cheap HCs.
I hope you're right. I'm just trying to be certain this is new information, and not the same reports that have been around since early this morning.
Some of “them” have two holes that need fixin’ (cough****cough****B.Fannie.Frankfurter***cough****cough).
Spare us... even if satire its not funny, because you KNOW idiot liberals will take it seriously or try to rehabilitate O.
O admin ignored and just sent lawyers and sat on BP. Then the blamed BP. ONly BP was actually working on the problem. Now BP fixes problem. So what does O have to do with that?
And O, having not ever let a crisis go to waste, will ban offshore drilling, bash companies, add regulations, stiff MMS and split it in two, and otherwise do EVERYTHING to harm our economy while doing NOTHING to help fix real problems.
Since you like to read, click over here...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2522179/posts
After you spend a day or two reading all the linked sources on theoilddrum, make sure you hit all the linked FR threads...then get back to us.
They could always improve the chances of preventing a blow-off by piling unread copies of the Healthcare Reform Bill on top...
I know the MSM will never ask such a question because time and time again they have demonstrated they are hypocrites but I would love to see BP and Obama duke it out for a while.
BP has in no way declared this a success yet.
Thank you Blaquaman.
Well whoever deserves the credit and the fault, I’m glad it’s plugged!
As long as it’s gushing Mud or Whatever it’s only a band-aid fix.
Until Cement is pumped in, solidifies and seals the well this is only a dynamic band-aid.
I guess I am finding the satire unfunny, knowing how the wounded get shot, the innocent made the villians and the guilty get the credit.
ALl that is really pointless. The REAL GOOD NEWS is that an environment disaster has been averted if the flow stops.
And the press is silent on real scandals of administration:
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2010/05/27/denver-post-goes-silent-senate-candidate-job-offer-scandal
At least I know how to read. You have just provided another link to the statements by Admiral Allen from early this morning, and I have yet to see a link to new, more recent information to confirm that the leak has been plugged.
The FR monitor was disallowing additional articles on what Admiral Allen said by mid-morning. But all I see so far for this thread are indirect links to what Allen said this morning, via Hot Air and Instapundit, and some of those links are no longer live.
If that leak is definitely stopped, it would be news on every news service. Where are all the stories? All I see hear is the same old story from early am.
I want to see confirmation, recent stories, but no one is providing it.
C'mon. He didnt do "nothing". He spent the last five weeks figuring out how to blame Bush for it.
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