This hydrocarbon release will not be stopped until the relief well reaches the original well and they can manage to take it under control. The folks trying to tame this Mocando well with long shot schemes and wild ideas working 5,000 feet below the sea surface drilled to 18,000 ft below mud line, are pawns in a dangerous PR game. The folks trying to make something happen are well intentioned, don't get me wrong, and no matter how improbable their success may be, I hope, for all of us, that they are wildly successful at stopping this disaster.
Having said that, can you imagine the public outcry if bp simply faced the likely outcome that it is going to take on the order of 2-3 months to drill the relief well and sat idly by? This is a show, pure and simple. But, you know, the same risky mentality, the same lip service to health, safety, and the environment that facilitated this incident is still front and center.
Please see the previous postings - as more information has surfaced, the lens has focused a bit. But, The Big Picture has, unfortunately been pretty clear from early on. If you read the oldest post, you will see that there was an inherent assumption that, of course, the BOP had worked - the last line of defense - from the 2nd to oldest post when we discovered that it, in actual fact, did not work - one god damn sorrowfully bad assumption.
Perhaps Estragon would be willing to weigh in on the oil industry's experience with BOP's.
UPDATE - 17th May 2010
bp has had some success today with collecting some of the oil spewing from the riser = major good news.
They are indicating a new scheme for plugging the well, one that i was not aware of even the concept. Apparently, the BOP has some "ports" that can be accessed that would allow the pumping of kill fluid down the well bore. I don't know how this will work since the ports are way smaller than the well bore. So, while the kill mud can be pumped into the well bore, at a relatively low rate, will it eventually be able to kill the well - I sure hope so....
Some layers of the spilled oil are reported to be neutrally buoyant within the water column and not rising to the surface.
In addition, the surface portion of the spill is getting close to the domain of the Loop Current, which is an offshoot of the Gulf Stream which flows Northward along the Atlantic Ocean. The Loop Current is effectively a "tributary", diverting from the coast near Cuba and cutting into the GOM and, after "looping" through a portion of the gulf, back into the Atlantic Ocean - continuity of momentum...
This is not good...
From 23rd April 2010
They are indicating a new scheme for plugging the well, one that i was not aware of even the concept. Apparently, the BOP has some "ports" that can be accessed that would allow the pumping of kill fluid down the well bore. I don't know how this will work since the ports are way smaller than the well bore. So, while the kill mud can be pumped into the well bore, at a relatively low rate, will it eventually be able to kill the well - I sure hope so....
Some layers of the spilled oil are reported to be neutrally buoyant within the water column and not rising to the surface.
In addition, the surface portion of the spill is getting close to the domain of the Loop Current, which is an offshoot of the Gulf Stream which flows Northward along the Atlantic Ocean. The Loop Current is effectively a "tributary", diverting from the coast near Cuba and cutting into the GOM and, after "looping" through a portion of the gulf, back into the Atlantic Ocean - continuity of momentum...
This is not good...
From 23rd April 2010
From 1st May 2010
From 3rd May 2010
From 4th May 2010
http://red-pill-blue-pill.blogspot.com/2010/05/lunch-in-belly-of-beast.html
From 5th May 2010
From 11th May 2010
Video clip of Obama addressing the "ridiculous" display of finger pointing at hearings.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/14/gulf.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=Sbin