Posted on 06/03/2010 10:33:54 PM PDT by 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)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
He’s a lesbian?
Prbably more than you wanted to know about availability of USA made drill pipe!:
http://drillpipesupply.com/new-drill-pipe
“E&M Specialty Company sells new drill pipe that is manufactured only by A.P.I. certified drill pipe manufacturers.
There are six A.P.I. drill pipe manufacturers in the U.S. Three of these companies are very large publicly held corporations that have all been manufacturing drill pipe for decades. The “Big Three” as they are called consist of Smith Services, Grant Prideco, & Omsco.
E&M Specialty has enjoyed a supply relationship with all three of these companies since the inception of our company in 1987. In addition, three more companies began manufacturing drill pipe in the U.S. all within the last 3-5 years. All three of these manufacturers began business during the oil industry boom of the mid 2000’s & all are privately held companies.
The oil industry boom of the mid 2000’s also gave way to a new acceptance of foreign made drill pipe, primarily from China. Although there are more than a dozen drill pipe manufacturers in China, there are only four companies that have a level of quality control that rivals their US counterparts.
These four companies are Hilong Group, Baoshan Iron and Steel, DP Master Manufacturing, and Wuxi Special Steel. All four are certified by the American Petroleum Industry and have established themselves as top of the industry outside of the United States.
I didn’t realize that the hydrates got that cold. I guess I was under the impression that oil that deep in the earth was very hot due to thermal heating.
My understanding is that they were transitioning, not closing the well head. They were in fact, done with the BOP. It is usually not needed once the well in in production.
They planned to remove the rig and put a production platform in its place. The rig was designed to do this. As far as the concrete, the process has more than one purpose. It also seals any breach or leaking joints that could be leaking into the casing.
I wonder if the guy pulled a negative pressure test before the cure time was up......?
Anyway it should all come out and be labeled within about a year as to the cause. One of the additives they use in some pipe is molybdenum. If the mix was wrong, you end up with pipe that is very hard but a bit brittle. Almost tool steel.
I dunno.....
My understanding is that BP wanted to do this first but the Obama administration told BP to do this as a last resort!
i wonder if it was the idea i floated at the beginning of the week?
may 31st
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2524390/posts?page=48#48
and
june 1st
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2525036/posts?page=12#12
I'm in no way an expert on oil well drilling, but I did do a little Internet research on the methods of installing "balanced plugs" in oil wells. It looked to me like it is often standard procedure to install a plug with the mud still in place.
For instance, if the mud is being circulated down through a central pipe and out through the "annulus", they only have to insert a measured slug of cement in the mud stream, and knowing all the volumes, stop the stream when the cement is just at the bottom and is balanced in the central pipe and annulus. Then they withdraw the central pipe and let the cement cure.
The Democrats have no concept that the purpose of government is to reduce friction in and remove barriers to commerce and productivity. They just don't understand that government can function in that way at all.
So we have the ridiculous spectacle of Gov. Jindal having to beg for permission to take critical steps necessary to protect the coastline because of Federal environmental regulations, and effective oil-gathering techniques prohibited because of Federal ocean effluent discharge rules. We see the whole process of protecting people and limiting damage from the spill slogging through a snarl of red tape.
On Day TWO, the first act of the Obama Administration should have been to announce a total and complete waiver of any and all laws and regulations that had even the most remote chance of hampering spill response. Use the executive power to dismiss any federal prosecutor or EPA regulator who makes even the slightest move to investigate or charge anyone over oil spill mitigation efforts. And they should have marshalled and orchestrated the efforts of experts not only from BP but from across the nation and around the world.
THAT would have been real leadership.
But instead we have a never-ending Amateur Hour in the White House, just as so many of us predicted.
I think the BOP could not crush or cut the pipe which is one of the ways it shuts of the flow in a blowout situation. It could also explain some of the problems they have had cutting the pipe rack apart to clear the area for capping.>>>>>>>>>
Inferior Chinese drill pipe would mean easier to crush or cut...So one would think
You are missing the view from the Right.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2034943/posts
To: FoxInSocks
Chinese drill pipe sucks, holes aplenty and twists-offs too.
The low price is lost when you are always tripping to change out pipe.
11 posted on Monday, June 23, 2008 1:04:28 AM by razorback-bert (Demorats tax returns consists of “welfare in” and “ child support out.”)
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But he does have experience in stealing ice cream from his employer and giving it away 'free' to others in order to win influence with his friends - something of which he is quite proud.
This is what a joy it will be when the Chinese and Russians start drilling in the Gulf. Their reputations on being stellar stewards of the environment and all.
They had best pray to whatever god they pray to, because that cut off pipe is gushing a lot more (20-30 percent) oil than it was before they cut it.
Looks like it`s still gushing oil.
That picture is heart wrenching. Poor pelican.
Fascinating theory. It all sounds incredibly reasonable to me. Thank you for sharing.
That’s the picture that the State-Run Media has been trying to get since the accident began. Now they have it.
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