BP puts containment dome on gushing oil geyser

The Washington Post ^ | June 4, 2010 | Joel Achenbach

[2ndDivisionVet]

The well has been capped, more or less. BP engineers Thursday night guided a containment dome onto the hydrocarbon geyser shooting from the Gulf of Mexico oil well -- a desperate and iffy attempt to capture the leaking oil and funnel it to a ship on the surface.

It was not an elegant operation. Furious clouds of oil escaped the "top hat." Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the spill, called the development a positive step but said, "It will be sometime before we can confirm that this method will work and to what extent it will mitigate the release of oil into the environment."

It was a day crammed with engineering drama. First, BP used robotic vehicles and a pair of giant shears to cut a damaged pipe a mile below the gulf's surface. The result simplified the whole arrangement at the sea floor: Instead of spewing from multiple leaks in a tangle of bent pipes, the oil and natural gas surged in a single plume from what looked like a deep-sea smokestack.

Then came the dome, lowered by cables, guided by robots, illuminated by lamps in a world without natural light, and carrying with it the hopes of countless engineers and pretty much the entire Gulf Coast.

Nothing has gone according to plan in the subsea environment as, on the surface, the oil has hit more than 100 miles of Louisiana shoreline. After brushing a barrier island in Alabama, it is poised to tar the white sand beaches of the Florida Panhandle. The area of the gulf closed to fishing is now larger than the state of Florida.(continued)

[lentulusgracchus]

It is almost like BP and Gov do not give a damn about keeping us (American people) informed.

Both of them are furiously "managing" the situation -- managing perceptions, that is.

[lentulusgracchus]

Good post, thank you.

French blowout preventers.

Made by low-paid French Moslems who care.

Think about that one for a while.

[jpsb]

"government doubled those estimates to between 20,000 and 50,000 barrels a day, saying those, too, may understate the size of the leak"

Now who is the idiot? Idiot.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Now who is the idiot? Idiot. "

Actually, you. You see, I understand the ins and outs of the various methods being used to "estimate" the spill. You can find a summary here: http://www.examiner.com/x-21743-New-Orleans-Progressive-Examiner~y2010m6d8-Scientists-from-the-Flow-Rate-Technical-Group-dispute-BPs-oil-containment-claims

Note that two of the three methods used ( the "mass balance" and "plume modelling" stand no chance of delivering accurate data). Nor can the idiots who are spending their time studying video images (and that includes the dumbass from Purdue, who uses "particle velocitomety", which simply cannot work under these conditions). The "riser insertion tube" method is the only of of the three that stands even a remote chance of giving good data. Also note that it yields the lowest value of the three methods.

It's been a busy weekend, so I don't have time to go into s long explanation justifying the above. Maybe later in the week.