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BP puts containment dome on gushing oil geyser
The Washington Post ^ | June 4, 2010 | Joel Achenbach

Posted on 06/03/2010 10:33:54 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

The well has been capped, more or less. BP engineers Thursday night guided a containment dome onto the hydrocarbon geyser shooting from the Gulf of Mexico oil well -- a desperate and iffy attempt to capture the leaking oil and funnel it to a ship on the surface.

It was not an elegant operation. Furious clouds of oil escaped the "top hat." Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the spill, called the development a positive step but said, "It will be sometime before we can confirm that this method will work and to what extent it will mitigate the release of oil into the environment."

It was a day crammed with engineering drama. First, BP used robotic vehicles and a pair of giant shears to cut a damaged pipe a mile below the gulf's surface. The result simplified the whole arrangement at the sea floor: Instead of spewing from multiple leaks in a tangle of bent pipes, the oil and natural gas surged in a single plume from what looked like a deep-sea smokestack.

Then came the dome, lowered by cables, guided by robots, illuminated by lamps in a world without natural light, and carrying with it the hopes of countless engineers and pretty much the entire Gulf Coast.

Nothing has gone according to plan in the subsea environment as, on the surface, the oil has hit more than 100 miles of Louisiana shoreline. After brushing a barrier island in Alabama, it is poised to tar the white sand beaches of the Florida Panhandle. The area of the gulf closed to fishing is now larger than the state of Florida.(continued)

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Breaking News; Business/Economy; News/Current Events; US: Louisiana
KEYWORDS: energy; obama; oil; oilspill; slowtorespond
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To: Berlin_Freeper

Has anyone noticed the almost TOTAL BLACKOUT of dead or dying wildlife photos? Yes, you see the occasional photo of an oil soaked pelican, but none of the large quantities of animals that we KNOW are dead and dying.

New York Daily News had an article yesterday about some reporter there supposedly being taken out by a fisherman turned oil skimmer who showed him scads of dead wildlife.
Guess what. NO PHOTOS!

But not only is there a MSM blackout, there seems to be an internet blackout as well. Whenever I’ve gone to websites like Flickr or Twitter, I find very little in the way of photos. THere is always the same photo of one oil soaked pelican or one dead turtle or one dead dolphin.


81 posted on 06/04/2010 4:11:48 AM PDT by a real Sheila (Obama isn't even voting "present!")
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To: Cold Heat

I SOOOO hope you are right!
I cried when I logged on to the live feed this morning and saw the oil gushing even with the cap on!


82 posted on 06/04/2010 4:13:59 AM PDT by a real Sheila (Obama isn't even voting "present!")
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To: Kevin in California

Looks that way to me as well.
:-(


83 posted on 06/04/2010 4:14:37 AM PDT by a real Sheila (Obama isn't even voting "present!")
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To: a real Sheila
but [no photos] of the large quantities of animals that we KNOW are dead and dying.

The above statement is equivalent to: "but [no photos] of what I believe must be large quantities [sic] of animals that we KNOW (because of our beliefs about what we think must happen based on our total lack of knowledge) are dead and dying."
84 posted on 06/04/2010 4:16:24 AM PDT by aruanan
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

“One third of the sea became blood, and one third of the living creatures which were in the sea died.”

Revelation 8:8-9


85 posted on 06/04/2010 4:18:19 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...))
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To: Cold Heat

(forgive my lack of knowledge of proper terminology)

according to the 60 Minutes story-

-One BOP battery was bad and had not been replaced.
-One BOP test was not conducted properly and resulted in a large rubber seal being damaged to the point that large chunks of rubber were coming up with the mud. This was brought to the attention of someone high up, but that person decided to forge ahead.


86 posted on 06/04/2010 4:21:02 AM PDT by a real Sheila (Obama isn't even voting "present!")
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

capped? not according to the live cam. it is gushing as much as before


87 posted on 06/04/2010 4:31:24 AM PDT by plain talk
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To: HiTech RedNeck
"I would have thought the next step would be to cinch a slightly larger (and flexible) pipe tightly over it. Instead, the “top hat” seems to rely on a very close tolerance fit.."

Descriptions by BP say that the original "Top Hat" was equipped with an elastomeric seal. Even rubber gaskets require a certain level of smoothness to seal. Using the shears instead of the diamond saw pushed the pipe "smoothness" out of spec for the gasket to seal as well as it would have had the diamond saw been successful. This detail is in pretty much every video about the "Top Hat" that I have seen.

88 posted on 06/04/2010 4:35:07 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog
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To: wolfman
Hydrates occur when the highly pressurized gas from the well-bore takes a pressure drop (expands). From high school chemistry you should know that expanding gas cools. When the methane gas encounters water (either entrained water from the well fluids or sea water) the mixture will freeze. To prevent hydrates from forming you have to either heat it up above hydrate formation temperature, equalize the pressure to prevent the sudden expansion or add methanol to alter the composition of the methane (gas) water mix.
89 posted on 06/04/2010 4:35:09 AM PDT by Cheesehead In Dubai (used to be Cheesehead in Texas, but I moved)
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To: shezza

They won’t let this crisis go to waste. They will use it to work stridently to end our pesky “freedom of transportation”. You will ride a bus or train someday - or walk to work in their planned urban beehive.


90 posted on 06/04/2010 4:35:58 AM PDT by epluribus_2
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To: Cold Heat
"The primary issue is the hydrates being formed by the super cold natural gas."

Hydrates are the issue, but the oil/gas coming out of the well is 140 degrees F. It's the seawater that is cold.

91 posted on 06/04/2010 4:39:36 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog
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To: a real Sheila

imagine the photos and tears if this were (wait for it) BUSH!


92 posted on 06/04/2010 4:42:20 AM PDT by epluribus_2
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To: HiTech RedNeck
"Humm, so basically the line is covered with frost. That does complicate things."

No. The line isn't covered with anything. The hydrates form after the oil/gas exits from the well and cools down. Which, unfortunately, is inside the pipe, and will thus cause blockage. So the pipe has to be heated and/or a solvent (methanol) added to prevent hydrate formation---both of which options are built into the Top Hat and riser line from it.

93 posted on 06/04/2010 4:42:54 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog
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To: Brugmansian

Douglas Brinkly, just another communist hack sporting the title “Historian”.


94 posted on 06/04/2010 4:44:29 AM PDT by PA-RIVER
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To: epluribus_2

you=we

Actually, the notion of freedom of transportation is entirely missed in the global warming, green energy debates and probably will be the basis for the next huge generation of millionaires and billionaires when we get the replacement of fossil fuel driven vehicles. Libs don’t think we need (or should have) cars anyway. We all need to be like manhattenites (or calcutta-ites).


95 posted on 06/04/2010 4:46:59 AM PDT by epluribus_2
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To: mvpel
"So we have the ridiculous spectacle of Gov. Jindal having to beg for permission to take critical steps necessary to protect the coastline because of Federal environmental regulations, and effective oil-gathering techniques prohibited because of Federal ocean effluent discharge rules."

IMHO, Jindal has NOT covered himself with glory here. Instead of asking the feds for permission, he should have just gone ahead and done it, and told the feds after the fact. Call out the National Guard construction battalions (I know Louisiana has at least one, and I doubt that all their resources are in Iraq/Afghanistan) and any other resources available. I'm sure there are lots of Louisiana contractors who would have DONATED time/equipment/personnel to fight this thing if asked.

96 posted on 06/04/2010 4:48:49 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog
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To: a real Sheila
Did it possibly cross your mind that there might just not be all that many "oil-coated pelicans", and that the extent of the oil coverage is not as great as the media would like??

If there were actually miles of totally oil coated marsh/beach, the media WOULD show it. The very FEW pictures I have seen that show oil are showing "spotty" deposits.

And you can bet that there are plenty of locals that have digital cameras and internet hookups.

97 posted on 06/04/2010 4:54:00 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Well it looks like maybe this will shut off most of oil because Odumbo is going down there to claim all the credit for the second time!!


98 posted on 06/04/2010 5:17:41 AM PDT by jacob allen
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
A containment dome:


99 posted on 06/04/2010 5:23:42 AM PDT by Moltke (panem et circenses)
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To: Wonder Warthog

Remember a few weeks ago when oil started washing up on shore in Louisiana? Nobody knew where it was coming from. My first thought was that it was deliberately spilled close to shore by environmentalists to make things look worse than they were, because scientists determined the oil that washed up on shore was not from BP’s gulf spill. I expect to see tv coverage of oil-coated pelicans who are covered with something from a can. (Call me a skeptic, but I don’t trust the administration, the media or the environmentalist wackos.)


100 posted on 06/04/2010 5:25:31 AM PDT by shezza (Blue star wife - God bless and keep safe our troops in harm's way.)
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