Posted on 05/16/2010 12:35:58 PM PDT by Ready4Freddy
HOUSTON - Reporting its first success in containing the massive Gulf oil leak nearly a month after it started, BP on Sunday said oil and natural gas were flowing via a mile-long pipe to a ship at the surface.
"So far it's working extremely well," BP Senior Executive Vice President Kent Wells said of the strategy of inserting a 4-inch tube into the 21-inch riser, a pipe in the seafloor from where the largest leak is spewing.
"We're very slowly increasing the rate" to get more oil and natural gas up, he told reporters. "We will just learn as we go with this approach." Siphoning oil from a mile down had never before been successful.
It's not clear how much of the overall leak is being captured, Wells said, but that should be known in the next day or two.
In any case, the tube is only an interim strategy until the well head can be capped. That requires drilling a second well to relieve pressure on the leaking well — a process that has started but which is expected to take at least two months.
Glitch a day earlier
On Saturday, the technique was attempted for the first time. Natural gas was siphoned out and then burned off when it got to the surface. Oil also entered the tube but a glitch stopped the strategy before any oil could make it all the way to the surface.
The glitch happened when engineers, via the robotic submarines, tried to connect two pieces of equipment a mile below the water's surface.
BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said one piece of equipment, called the framework, had to be brought to the water's surface so that adjustments could be made to where it fits with the long tube that connects...
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
I am just back from the FL gulf coast. Tourism is down everywhere and was well before this spill started. The real costs of the spill should be reimbursed, but FL was not booming before this happened.
We need to be careful to separate the Leftist anti-growth rhetoric from reality. The beaches were beautiful and the fishing good in FL this last month.
We spent time with some marine biologists and oceanographers from the university down there and they were worried about the potential effects on the environment, but to a man had seen nothing on it yet.
Correct. Think of all the blessings that come from this accident and all the knowledge gained that will make deep water drilling safer in the future.
Maybe instead of making this nifty graphic they should have been working on fixing it /sarc
You're probably right, but I would not bet on the No way is he this stupid statement. I really believe we give these idiots a lot more credit then they deserve.
BP is limited to $75M in economic damage claims plus the entire cost of Physical Cleanup.
The limit is only to claims like shippers and fishermen whose business was restricted at this time.
It’ll justify draconian restrictions on off-shore drilling, and silence critics of those restrictions. Everyone who resents paying $6 a gallon at the pump just wants another BP disaster. So right now, it pays to pour a little oil on their Reichstag fire.
Do people still think that this event occurring a few hours before and just in time to be front page news on “Earth Day” is an accident?
Jeez Louise.. how naive can one get?
W
>Halliburtion was responsible for cementing the well and Cameron International supplied the blowout preventer. I think those two might be more responsible than BP.<
smokingfrog tagged “armed with the truth”:
You need more than lite truth ... some depth. e.g. Please look into who was modifying, testing, maintaining the BOP for many years.
Thanks for the links. And we think we have it bad here... (concerning this leak)
“People like you are the reason we aren’t drilling for oil in more areas.”
For much of my life I have made my living on drilling rigs out in the Gulf and due to those moratoriums that have been in place since 1981, I often have to travel to dark corners of the earth in order to work.
“Take your hate of oil comapanies over to DU, I am sure they will agree with you. “
I do not hate my industry but when people in my industry make huge mistakes that lead to disaster, I expect the companies those people work for to take full financial responsibility for their actions.
But, I do understand that some people, I am not sure why they are on FR, expect the federal government to take financial responsibility for such disasters.
BP called all the shots on that platform.
I understand the risks as I have worked on offshore platforms. However, when BP makes such an egregious mistake, we must call on BP to clean-up the mess and not rely on the Nanny State Federal Government to clean up the mess.
Oh, I see, you want the American Taxpayer and not BP to take on the financial responsibility for this disaster.
I’m sorry but this is the fault and responsibility of BP and not your beloved Nanny State Federal Government.
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