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 ...
It was January 1969. I was a student/surfer at the University of California back then and remember it well. The Santa Barbara Channel has always had natural oil seepage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_Santa_Barbara_oil_spill
True enough as far as it goes, but don’t you get a little sick and tired of the Federal government extracting taxes specifically for the purpose of handling situations such as this and completely failing to execute a prepositioned and designed plan to handle and mitigate these problems. Those taxes pass directly to you at the pump.
AGREED, while I also believe BP should pay for the cleanup, if the GOVVVVVMENT has a fund, collected at the pump e.g. your and my arse, then Bammy better start cutting some checks, or stop collecting the tax. I mean this isn’t social security we are talking about here. We know that fund (SS) has been ape raped for decades.
The Taxpayer taking it in the rear once again!
Good news....and I hope this means that my BP stock will go back up tomorrow!
...and BRAVO to 'em!
Suck BP, suck!
There are thousands upon thousands of livelyhoods at stake here on the coast.
I think BP is probably better off for not having Obama give them money.
You’re exactly right. If they took taxpayer money, the evil bastard would control them.
Get Jennifer Flowers on the job.
+1 on the lack of contingency planning.
I would have thought this situation would have been planned for and rehearsed, using inter company resources and government entities. Not the containment of the leak, but the mitigation of a leak deep underwater.
The only thing between this kind of disaster and the ocean is a single layer of pipe wall? This has been going on this way for how long? Maybe E and P has to be done this way, but there should be a series of steps, equipment standing by, trained personnel etc. ready when it fails.
This is a failure of the system. At least Obama had the tenacity to include the federal government in the blame game.
This is the oil industries’ “Three Mile Island”. Always said the Obama era would look like Jimmy Carter’s. Look for an Iranian flare up next, but spare me the disco music.
Put these two on global warming. They’ll fix it in a day (because it’s a fake crisis, but just throw a little hay on it and there we are).
The writer is an idiot. To Siphon is to allow gravity to take fluid from a high level to a low level.
The flow is the result of pressure adequate to force the gas and fluid to the surface
You know folks, I’m not happy what is taking place, but this go for the throat attitude toward BP serves nobody well, unless you’re Barack Obama and his fascist flying monkey squad.
Do we really need to buttress their position on this?
I am hoping this won’t have the full negative impact that we are each fearful of. And I must say, if I were living in the areas affected, I’d be angry, no doubt.
Anyone who thinks BP wanted this to take place, is kidding themselves. This is a very bad scenario for them. Oil companies already have high negatives. This is certain to add to them.
Now, as for denying BP rights in the Gulf, the U.S. doesn’t have control of drilling in international waters. This may not have been international waters, but my guess is that it was. If not, do we really want to let Vietnam, China, Mexico, Cuba and everyone else to drill in the Gulf, and deny BP?
What we should be doing is ramping up drilling. Instead one of these accidents takes place, a once in 25 years event, and we all of a sudden get shaky knees and start sounding like a group ANSWER bussed in.
Enough already.
Dittos.
Well said...
“...if the GOVVVVVMENT has a fund, collected at the pump...”
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Yeah, right, I suppose you think it’s in a ‘lockbox’, like social security...
Despite plan, not a single fire boom on hand on Gulf Coast at time of oil spill
I bet the 'fund' is the same place as the Social Security Trust fund...and soooo many others--raided and gone. Liberals hate business. Just think of all those 'first dollars' hanging on the wall the libs can't get their hands on!
ty
See #57...
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