AP: BP Plug/Top Kill Has Failed

AP | 5-29-10

[My Favorite Headache]

AP news break via ABC News Radio that the top kill plug has failed and has not worked. Link to follow...

[Canedawg]

LOL!

[Positive]

Correct but that procedure is like putting a thread through a needle hole when you hold the thread about 12 inches from the needle and your approach is horizontal...

Long shot...

[autumnraine]

Well, Russia insists that nuking it will fix it. However from what I’ve read, that may pose a whole new set of problems. THe Gulf is home to the largest methane deposit in the world and the last time it let loose from a meteor (the large crater off coast of Mexico), it caused the dinosaurs to die from poisonous gas surging into the atmosphere.

[Red in Blue PA]

obama (small o) owns this one.

I think he stepped in to take credit when it appeared things were getting better.....now that they aren’t well, the buck stops with obozo.....he said so after all.

[Lmo56]

And I also heard O say it was plugged on Thursday at his presser. Even though BP had stopped the procedure BEFORE his press conference which I think meant it wasn’t working when Obama made his statement!

Seems as if Obama "jumped the shark" on this one ...

Reminds me of a guy back on election night 2000 ...

[Drango]

grin

[WellyP]

Relief well progress chart http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/incident_response/STAGING/local_assets/downloads_pdfs/relief-well.pdf

[Red in Blue PA]

he’s on vacation, and Rahm is in Israel. No one’s home

Honestly, can anyone really tell the difference?

[NVDave]

Engineers (both inside and outside NASA) knew, a priori, that the failure rate of the Shuttle would result in a loss of mission and/or lives in rates between “one in dozens” to “one in hundreds” of launches, not the “one in a million” BS spouted by politicians and NASA administrators. (for more information, see Feynman’s second autobiography).

Should they have been charged with malpractice? No, because the policy makers and management refused to listen to the engineers.

The same thing will likely come out in investigations here. Management didn’t listen to engineers.

The reason why I quit engineering is because I grew tired of sacrificing my nights and weekends to clean up after management’s ideas of charging ahead, regardless of consequences warned of previously. Almost every engineer, in almost all disciplines of engineering, can tell you all about what it is like to tell management “Uh, that’s not such a wise idea,” only to be ignored. Repeatedly.

[olrtex]

Obama dithered, the Gulf withered!

[spectre]

I’m beginning to think that whenever his handlers have no instructions for him and he has no ideas of his own, he either shoots hoops or golfs.

Perfect example of the blind leading the blind.

Obama's girls will be out of school shortly and they'll no doubt be heading to the Beaches of Hawaii...... But, he really does feel our pain../s

[ConservativeStatement]

Obama’s daughter is going to question him again.

[mojitojoe]

the horse and pony show continues

BP needs to show activity at the wellsite ....they are doing that.....nice feed ...coupla ROV’s switching views .....makes good TV but one sentence sums it up “ relief well , maybe august possibly early September”

here’s how the summer will pan out...

1- Top kill -— shows good activity at wellsite ...good ROV feeds buys a week for BP

2- Junk Shot -— another feel good ....problem is they holes are bigger than the size of the bridging agents they are able to get into the kill and choke like .....you really cant block a basketball net with a tennis ball kinda deal here ...but hey shows activity and has a feel good factor here.....the monster well silenced by a few measly golf balls.

so far the public has had a good time staying glued to the leak wondering if its mud coming out or HC’s.....paying close attention to the color ....again good TV for all

now we get in the part of operations where public will have a hard time looking at the feeds .....cuz the next dog and pony show will be

1- LMRP cap .......another good sounding solution but the HC’s leakage will significantly increase during this process when the riser is cut .....and this will make for very bad TV viewing ....this will actually combine the leaks (rmbr BP has been clever ....no single shot exists anywhere on the MSM which shows all the leaks in a concurrent view .......its always the dang ROV on top of the BOP showing the leaking mud ).....LMRP cap will make for bad TV viewing by combining leaks into a big leak so the perspective on the leak will be better than what BP has show so far.....RMBR BAD TV this process — but buys a week for BP

2- putting another BOP on the existing BOP ....this will make for fantastic TV viewing .....a huge piece of equipment ...many pipes and odd shapes ......beautiful TV right here .....but cannot work since there is no way BP can risk a hot approach on this ....the risk -reward ratios can never be favorable no matter how you dress the figures in this case.....there is DP string in there ...you can bet the horse and the stable BP knows where and how long...excellent TV and buys BP another week

the axis of action here is off -— the solution would be containment until the relief well is sunk .....and not reality TV for public ...the money being spent on the kill mud needs to go for skimming oil, booms, PPE for the workers and other cleanup/containment efforts.....there are atleast 20 boats involved with these horse and pony tricks at the wellsite ....thats 20 boats that could be skimming oil and deploying boom

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6528

[dennisw]

All that can be taken into account. We have very small tactical nukes that would be perfect. I’d love the experts to study it’s use but the Feds and BP are too scared of nukes in my opinion. So no one is studying it. Instead they will take 2 more months for the relief wells to plug up the well

While the coasts and fishing resources get polluted for years. Those natural resources are worth billions more than one damn oil well. That’s seafood, shrimp, tourism, beaches out there. And coastal spawning grounds for fish...ALL POLLUTED over the months spent drilling relief wells. When this well could have crushed shut by a tactical nuke 5000ft down below the ocean floor

[sanjuanbob]

I don’t have a clue about underwater oil leaks, but has anyone thought about harnessing the oil and bringing it up to the surface in an orderly fashion for usage?

[NVDave]

This was likely a long shot anyway. The thing is, the public is utterly ignorant of the pressures and flow velocities involved here, or what it takes to contain them.

The pressure “down well” in the oil deposit is estimated to be about 13,000 PSI.

Most people have no conception of how to deal with 1,000 to 3,000 PSI liquids unless they’ve dealt with a hydraulic system. A typical hydraulic system on a farm tractor, backhoe, etc — runs about 2,000 to 2,700 PSI. That’s low pressure by comparison, and leaks in those systems are a royal pain in the neck to deal with, they’re on the surface of the earth, where you can work on them, you can shut the engine/pump off to deal with it, you don’t need to use a ROV to use your tools, etc.

[Cvengr]

If you have a propane tank leaking in your back yard, do you automatically place a satchel charge on it, thinking that will stop the leak? It might just release all of the oil below in a much more rapid fashion.

[WoofDog123]

I have read specifics somewhere on why a nuke is not correct for the geologic makeup of the deep horizon well.

[Cvengr]

It would be more intelligent to place a windmill beside the oil leak to generate electricity, than to place a nuke on top the reservoir. Neither is intelligent.

[mojitojoe]

LOL!! IF he wasn’t lying about the kid saying that, and that is a big IF, then why did she say “ Dad did you plug the hole yet”? HE must be speaking as if it’s HIS. Not saying THEY need to get that hole plugged or we need to get it plugged, but I and I emphasize the “I”. It’s all about him always all about him! His entire life he was a big f**k up and people covered for him. Affirmative action college kid, foreign aid to go to schools, he’s a pathological narcissist sociopath.