Posted on 05/24/2010 7:56:01 PM PDT by mojitojoe
I haven’t been following the live cams, partly because I don’t have the bandwidth, and partly because I am out on a well and don’t have the time during this phase (this well, needless to say, gets priority). You appear to have an image of three small high pressure plumes there, maybe a fourth and much smaller on the right. Where is this in the scheme of things? (I haven’t been watching so you probably know the seafloor surface layout better at this point than I do.)
While this doesn't mean a top kill can't work, necessarily, it does cut the odds down, depending on where the leak is.
If that is enough to stop the top kill, there remains the relief well option, to get down to the producing formation, fill the existing wellbore with heavy drilling fluid from the bottom, and cement off the wellbore and the producing formation, stopping the oil at its source.
http://tinyurl.com/36rzdy4
A commenter there has this to say about the spot with the 4 plumes.(I have no way to know if it is correct or not but I think it is - just based on observations and other FReepers comments on other threads.)
"There is a choke in the riser - the kink - and also the length itself. There may be some other restrictions as it is 'V' shaped now - kink, down to the mud, up a 1,000' and back down to the mud and along to the exit where the RIT was installed. It also contains the drill string. The kink is the most pronounced restriction and there is enough pressure there for the oil and gas to have eroded the four holes we see in the video now spouting mud."
Would love to hear your views...
Maybe the BP folks can monitor those plumes and use them to gauge how well they are drawing down the produced fluid at what flow rate on the recovery vessel, and more efficiently tap the riser.
It sounds like you have been on the job - hope this means you're going to be able to get some rest, not that you are going back to work. ;^D
Thanks! I’m back at it, (I got seven really good hours of sleep, a shower and a hot meal, so I’m good to go for 12!)
I was really calling for studying the nuke option and be ready for it, if geologists and other experts said it was viable.
"Nuke it FROM ORBIT, it's the only way to be sure." Second Aliens movie--a sequel every bit as good as the first.
On the nuke itself... people talk about as if it would be easy to do once the decision was made. Does anyone else think there might be some difficulties in getting a bomb to withstand the 5000 psi pressures one mile down? Are they that strongly built and that watertight?
The Russians nuked misbehaving wells that were on land, not a mile under the sea.
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