beachmommy on July 22, 2010 - 4:35pm
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Listening to Van Niewenhuise on BBERG and he's refuting Matt Simmons.......wich I could get this link from the BBERG to my laptop because it's a good one, but not able to link it..
ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES -- New Option to Seal Oil Well; Aired July 19, 2010 - 23:00 ET
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Don, what do you think the chances are that this thing's going to work?
DONALD VAN NIEWENHUISE, GEOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON: This can definitely work. And the way it works -- Chad explained it extremely well -- and what's different here is, in the first case, we had pressure that was active. It was dynamic, pushing on that mud and pushing it out, just as Chad said.
Now, in this case, the pressure is static. It's not moving. It's high pressure. But if you can get the mud into -- let's call that -- the wellbore a vessel, so to speak, that has 6,800 pounds per square in it. Once you get the mud into that vessel, the weight of the mud will fall to the bottom of that static pressure control. And once it gets down there and starts to build up, it will displace the oil from the bottom up. And when it does that, it's heavier than the oil and the gas, as Chad pointed out.
And, as it does that, it will actually kill the pressure, and the pressure at the surface where the cap is will be much, much lower, something on the order of 2,500 to 4,500 PSI, instead of 6,800 PSI. So, at the end of the day --
COOPER: So, what are the big risks, Don?
VAN NIEWENHUISE: There really isn't any risk at this point. The biggest issue that concerns me is that, earlier today, we were told that those flow lines wouldn't handle 6,800 PSI. And now we've been told that -- that they will actually handle that much pressure.