Posted on 07/12/2010 7:36:00 AM PDT by Natural Born 54
For the first time Friday, the Coast Guard and BP acknowledged that a mysterious second pipe, wedged next to the drill pipe in what remains of the Deepwater Horizon's riser, is fouling up the works where the well is spewing hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
(snip)
While Allen said he believes the second pipe fell from above, some experts have advanced another explanation. They believe poorly cemented casings -- tubes that are supposed to form solid walls down thousands of feet of the well bore -- may have been dislodged by the blast of natural gas that shot up out of the well and above the sea floor.
(snip)
The Coast Guard's acknowledgement of the two metal tubes Friday -- and a subsequent reference by BP to its plans to tie the two pipes together as the company installs a new oil collection system over the shaved-off riser -- actually comes more than a month after the Department of Energy noted the existence of two pipes using special imaging technology. At the time, BP dismissed the Energy findings as "impossible" because only one pipe in sections was used for drilling, a Tribune News Service story reported last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
My BP stock is up 4 points since I bought it. Makes time number 4 that I could have been a multimillionaire of only I’d had the bucks to make the investment: Ford at $4 (now at $11), Bank of America at $7-8, GE at $11.
I wish they would just drill more wells and pump this thing dry.
You nailed it. I’ve tried hard to grasp this (as a civilian, non-engineer) entire disaster. So far I’ve learned: 1) the world is going to end any minute from a massive methane explosion. 2) this really isn’t a big deal- after all oil is natural so it’s ok, it will clean itself up. 3) Obama planned this and has hundreds of people in on the conspiracy. 4) No one knows what happened. No one knows if it can be fixed. 5) Bill Clinton wants to nuke it.
My heads spins and it’s just impossible to be sure what’s fact and what’s spin.
I'm still holding out for OilBama to try to blast the BP leak shut with a nuke.
It is the worst possible solution, the one most damaging to America, and therefore the one The One is most apt to use.
With luck he can diddle daddle long enough to have to do it in a blind panic just before a major hurricane lances into America's soft white underbelly.
Such a nuke would:
• Replace an 18" dia pipe leaking oil with a quarter mile wide crater over bedrock shattered all the way down to the full oil deposit.And as a special bonus he could then use the results to ban all oil drilling and eliminate America's entire nuclear arsenal.
• Violate international nuclear weapon treaties.
• Flash abundant amounts of sea water into steam both by the bomb itself and the exposed hot crust/magma.
• Provide a thermal turbocharge boost to convert an ordinary hurricane into a continent crossing hypercane.
• Ignite vast quantities of methane and oil, generating massive quantities of CO2 and raining down fire over hundreds of square miles.
• Inundate America's breadbasket farmland with a deluge of radioactive, oily saltwater all the way up to the Canadian border.
•And who knows? It might even shake loose the New Madrid fault.
From his viewpoint, what's not to love?
All that’s left for him to decide is how big a nuke to use.
I have friends on the Gulf Coast -they (and everyone they know) are so furious at this president, this government and BP they can’t see straight. They weren’t mad at BP initially- they had the “accidents happen” view. Now however, 2 months afterwards and STILL no grownups in sight- they’ve had it with all of them.
Have you asked any of the 0bama voters in that lot how that hopey-changey thang is working out for them?
bttt
Does anyone know the diameter of the drill pipe in use when the well blew out.
BP wasn’t dismissing the idea that there was a 2nd pipe in the cut-out section. They even have a picture with two pipes on their web page, where they give their updates.
They were dismissing the idea that the 2nd pipe came up from the well. They believe it is part of the broken pipe from above when the drilling rig sank.
Dropped down or was blown up.
Anyway I agree that the BOP probably isn’t designed to shear two pipes to close off the well.
There are also reports that bits of rubber were coming up in the mud before the well blew.
The roughnecks interpreted this as evidence that the seals on the BOP’s hydraulics were damaged.
They were, of course, ignored.
Ah. Thanks for the clarification.
Five inch drill pipe would squash down to about 7 1/2 inches wide, twice that would be about half the width of the riser at 22 inches diameter.
That's just an example, but production casing, the smallest at 7 inches, would squash down to just about 11 inches wide, much larger than the drill pipe.
This looks more like someone dropped a joint or stand (three ~31 ft. joints of drill pipe screwed together) down the hole while all hell was breaking loose on deck. Without the numbers, I can't say for certain, but that could help indicate whether the pipe in the riser was casing (from downhole) or not.
It shouldn’t have if it was in an abandoned leg, that should have been behind pipe and below either cement or a bridge plug and a whipstock, in a dead end leg with no pressure below it. My bet is on something dropped when the SHTF.
Where’d you see that? Per Kent Wells this morning only one piece of drill pipe was found.
No, they finally have admitted it was 2. Admiral Allen admitted it also. They aren’t sure where it came from.
If the oil is reaching the surface around the backside of the casing, wouldn’t that indicate a significant casing breach at the lowest levels? The flow path of the product has been eroding and flushing huge amounts of sedimentary soils up to the ocean bottom. Is there enough mud on the planet to effectively fill this void and choke off the flow? I appreciate your hard-earned insights on this grave matter.
Check UCANSEE2’s post.
I’m talking about what was found when the flange was pulled overnight.
Yesterday, about 5000' feet under the ocean when they removed the Riser Tube lower flange. They were sticking up out of the BOP upper flange.
They had a special 'tool' they lowered over the top and cut out the two pipes. Then, they lowered the new TRANSITION SPOOL onto the BOP upper flange (late yesterday evening) and finally tightened the bolts ( early, early this morning, before light)
IF the pressure tests are successful, they will close the new CAP that is on top of the NEW BOP (junior sized version) that is being mounted on top of the TRANSITION SPOOL.
The closing of that cap could occur sometime late this evening.
IF ALL GOES WELL, the leaking oil will be stopped before tomorrow morning.
I don't know where you are getting your INFO, but it is BS.
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