Same one that applies to those other disasters. When you say you have a backup plan, have one that exists and is tested. It took then three weeks to build the cap they said existed. And then more weeks to discover and solve basic thermodynamic problems with the cap. So 1.5 month later, they still do not have the working solution they existed years ago.

When the maintenance calls for scrubbing the inside of a pipe to protect it, then do what then engineering demands.

When the only protection is a backup O'ring. And when previously flights almost failed for the same reason, then fix the problem. Don't reply on backups.

When trees are suppose to be cut tens of feet below high voltage transmission lines, then cut them. When the power lines are suppose to be loaded only to 95% capacity, do not load them routinely to 110%. When the computer system repeatedly locks out and does not report any failures, get the manufacturer's software updates from many years ago that fixes the problem. When you crash the entire NE power grid, then do not go walking about the building looking for the company president. Start the power recovery operations.

When the engineers say the leaking valve also will not report whether it is open or closed, then replace the defective valve. Do not restart the nuclear reactor to let the coolant all steam out of the plant, via a closed valve that is really open; exposing the nuclear core.

When the company has no innovations in thirty years except for those required by government regulation, then do not use money games to protect profits and further destroy the product lines.

When the NRC says the plant has a Three Mile Island problem that must be fixed NOW - then do not sponsor a Bush-Cheney campaign fund raiser to keep the plant operating.

When hundreds of engineers are desperately asking for information for more than a week to save seven Columbia astronauts, then do not quash the requests. Instead learn who want to know and why.

When a torpedo has a nasty habit of starting on its own and then exploding, fix the design of the torpedo.

When a gas tank on a school bus is outside of the frame, unprotected, and adjacent to the door, then don’t put that gas tank there.

When 500 pound bombs made before WWII and stored in a tropical environment are so old as to indiscriminately explode on their own, do not put them on an air craft carrier.

When the engineers say a new refinery process is too dangerous to start up with people still in the refinery, then do not startup that plant with people still in it.

When every light is flashing red; when security people say an attack is imminent involving planes and buildings, then don't ignore the memo on your desk that says it is coming.

When the tire is discovered defective; causing roll overs that kill people. Then do not say you will add a fifth ply to fix the defect; label the tire five ply; then never put that fifth ply into the tires. Then blame union workers for the missing ply.

When the Senior VP - the company #2 man - bluntly warns the entire company is at risk due to massive and unsustainable derivative investments, then do not fire him. Instead fix the problem 14 months before the entire economic meltdown and government intervention.

When putting Marines into a combat situation, then do not decree from the White House that those Marine guards cannot have live ammunition in their guns. After all they might shoot a Lebanese civilian.

When even the patent for the suspension says the car will roll over and kill if the stabilizer bar is not included, then include the stabilizer bar. Do not worry about the $4 additional expense.

When the car explodes on the test track before even the first one is sold, then install the $2 cap so that the gas tank will not explode. Do not deny the solution for years while people burn to death in the car. And do not keep putting gas tanks behind the rear axle where explosions are inevitable.

But these were all accidents with plenty of blame to go around. Maybe we should start at the sources of problems before they happen? Do you think?

Gulf damage is done. What has not happened in July is already a forgone conclusion. It will exist long into the fall. Begging for miracle ideas will not solve the reason for the failure or make a solution happen any faster. When the company stops drilling a second relief well because they *know* the first one will be successful, then a US president ordered them to restart drilling that second relief well. That is called a solution. Also have a backup well being drilled.

Why are they not asking for solutions so that this will not happen again. Because they who are stuck with the problem are also the only reason it (and future ones) exists.

I do like your posts, tw.

maybe i'm just reaching but similar to what glatt mentioned. take an oversized rubber pipe with a hose clamp type device. guide it onto the riser then use a ROV to clamp it down

Was already done - and failed.

Why did they not want the number of barrels per day measured? They did not want you to know why the things they were doing would be failures before they did it. They were using a four inch pipe to try to collect flow from an eight inch pipe. If the flow was only 5,000 barrels per day, then that four inch pipe might work. But the flow is more like 70,000 barrels per day - as so many third parties estimated from pictures. Pictures that BP would not release until ordered to by the White House.

Why would BP not release those pictures? Then we would learn how pathetic the pipe would be.

What happens to a nine inch rubber pipe that is one mile long? It snaps.

Well, a four inch pipe surrounded by a rubber stopper did not work. Stopper could not stop leaking. But then nothing they would try has ever been done before. Despite claims that they had backup plans, not one had been tested by anything but a pencil. That is the problem. The resulting oil all over the gulf is only secondary - is a smaller problem. Don't lose perspective. That is what BP's spin machine wants you to do. Worry about details.

What other solutions are being discussed? Who will be the new owners of BP. That is how solutions start. What is happening in the gulf is a forgone conclusion. The leak will not stop until that relief well finally locates and then drills into the original well some 16000 feet below the ocean's bottom.

Maybe this is some passive aggressive shit on the part of the brits. I think they're still pissed over the tea we wasted.

I think Bush did it.

No no no no no no no....you have to blame Obama. He's the guy in the White House. Nothing ever happened before his term that he isn't responsible for. Every single issue in the economy, environment, education, finance, politics, world government, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and the leaks in my roof are Obama's fault. Get it straight!

Plus it's very stylish right now to hate Obama.:yesnod:

True. I'm just waiting for Kanye to announce that Obama hates black people.

I'm just glad he's looking for an ass to kick. It shows he has his priorities straight.

I actually have an idea that many people think is sound. The only problem is I don't know what the interior of the well shaft is made of and its diameter. I actually have a serious possible solution but its efficacy rests on my assumptions, which may be wrong, about the material and dimensions of an oil well. And what is the pressure of the oil coming out of the pipe?
pm me the info

If your idea is to stick a banana in the end of the pipe... they already tried.

It worked on my neighbor's car... :(

I know, I know. It seems like a failproof plan that's why I emailed it to them. all I got back was some bureaucratic gobbeldygook form letter with a handwritten "don't you think we already tried that, dumbass?!?" on the bottom.

There was also the voicemail from Obama wanting to schedule my asskicking, but I just deleted that.

I've been hearing/reading that this is nowhere near a slam dunk solution either. You heard any more on it?

So what you are saying is that I can stop buying all the gum in Pennsylvania.

The current containment cap is scheduled to be removed in a week or two, right? That's why they're still looking for suggestions?

The actual rate of flow should be measured at that point. A lot of errors (both of management and design) could have been prevented if the volume and speed of oil had been known.

No man is a prophet in his own country. ;)

The inside of the well shaft is made of black licorice. The diameter is about like a small pizza.

Actually I'm not involved with that project in any way - they just sent out an e-mail to the whole company and it said that we should pass along any suggestions that we receive. I'd definitely like to hear what you're thinking, sn.

I have heard from unreliable sources that one possible technique is to detonate a nuclear bomb several hundred meters below the sea floor within a few hundred meters of the well. The shock and blast should crumple the pipe and re-fuse the rock, sealing the leak. Allegedly the soviets did this once, but on land. I haven't done any research of my own to check this. Aint gonna happen.

Link
I know the Gulf is just a teeny bit larger than 6mil gallons, but it doesn't need to do the whole gulf just the polluted part which admittedly is growing every moment. If these could help... get 'em going.

Awesome link.

So to make some wild assumptions based on the chart: Since the bottom of the well is 18,000 feet deep, and water pressure at 18,000 feet deep is roughly 500 ATM, we can assume that the oil pressure coming up out of the well is at 500 ATM. (I'm assuming that rock weighs the same as water here. Although clearly it weighs more.)

The water pressure at the blowout preventer is 150 ATM, so the pressure difference between the leaking oil and the water at the bottom of the ocean is 350 ATM. Or more likely more than that.

So how do you contain 350 ATM? A scuba tank is pressurized at 204 ATM, so if you can visualize the thickness of a scuba tank wall, if you doubled that, it ought to be strong enough. I'd quadrupole that, just to be on the safe side. So that's how strong whatever you are using has to be. But how to you cut off the stream from a fire hose nozzel?

It always was known. But if you knew how large that flow is, you might get angry. It is called spin. The exact same technique used so that we "knew Saddam had WMDs."

A Navy skimmer has just arrived for Gulf duty. How many gallons does it skim before returning to port? 1200 gallon. How large is the flow out of that wellhead? About 1 to 3 million gallons per day. See why they fear you might see numbers?

Silly is to worry about a solution. In late August, the first relief well might intercept the leaking well. Might. At one miles below the surface and another 15,000 feet underground, it must hit a pipe that is maybe 4 inches in diameter. And hope the drill head does not break off. If the drill head breaks off, they must start all over again drilling another well. Until then, this oil will continue leaking. Live with reality. Flow will continue all summer. There is no other viable solution.

People who don't wait to be told are already asking who will be purchasing the remains of BP. It should be obvious. BP as a viable company is done. We got the government regulation they paid for. This is what you must now live with. Deal with that reality.

The numbers are known. Those numbers are well above the 5000 barrels per day that BP spin was preaching. If you think numbers are unknown, then BP spin has you right where they wanted you. Learn from history: Saddam’s WMDs. Use the exact same thinking process to see through the spin.


Zengum - the USSR used a tactical nuclear weapons on an Arctic Ocean oil well - back when nobody was looking. If was their last and only option. They got lucky. It worked.

Also, the fine is based on flow.

The fine should basically be to hand over the keys to this business.
Apparently the emergency fund that the coast guard is using to finance the cleanup is almost maxed out. Not the fund itself, but the amount they can tap into. BP needs to be doing the paying N.O.W! Why is the Gov't financing this for them?

Is the pressure there determined only by the depth?

Only about a month+ late...

I'm reading a book right now about setting prices and going through price negotiations, and the theories promoted in that book are being used in this situation where they are estimating oil flow from this leak. BP and others aren't trying to agree on a price like you would with a sale, but they are trying to arrive at a number. One of the main points of the book is the idea of an "anchor" number. Once one party sets an anchor, all number floated after that anchor tend to be pulled toward that anchor number.

BP threw a number out there early on that was very low. They won the race to set the anchor point. So now everyone who has seen or heard that number, whether they realize it or not, is thinking about that original (low) BP number. Any future numbers are going to be compared to the low number and even if they are actually accurate they will be viewed as being unreasonably high. The burden of proof will be on the new numbers coming out to prove that they aren't unreasonable.

Interesting theory glatt... how is the fact that the flow increased substantially because of an effort to contain it?
Additionally ...
Link
Grrrr! :mad:

Great graphic HM. After seeing it may I say that the idea of the floating oil rig attached to a fragile pipe is perhaps one of the stupidest ideas/catastrophes waiting to happen that I've ever seen.

There are a number of plumbing tricks to cap water gushing from pipes, whether they would scale up is another question.

One device is a valve with a barbed fitting that slips over a pipe while the valve is open. once it is in place the valve is closed. The greater the pressure the deeper the barb grabs.



Another technique is to cut threads around the outside of the pipe, screw an open valve on and then close the valve. Like shutting off a hose with a nozzle:
http://www.supplierlist.com/photo_im...ose_Nozzle.jpg

There are a couple more possibilities.

Which was not easily done even on the surface where everything is easy.

A company in Western PA could not cap a gushing methane gas well for half a day - on the surface where everything is easy.

Appreciate what has happened. Deep sea drilling used to be a few hundred feet of water. A 2008 record is 8000 feet (by Deepwater Horizon). We are tapping reservoirs that we really do not understand. 5000 and 18,000 feet under the ocean, then another 10,000 or 20,000 feet into the earth. These pressures are not the trivial stuff seen in western PA. We really do not know how massive these pressures could spike to - the kick. Did you read every number like it was necessary to have a hard-on? You must.

A BlowOut Preventer designed to standards for oil wells 10 and 15 years ago may no longer be sufficient for 'kicks' that occur 18,000 feet below a mile of ocean. That kick that destroyed Deepwater Horizon may mean we are no longer using strong enough technology. We have little experience at these depths. (Brazilians at 18,000 to the bottom should pay attention.)

BP is famous for taking short cuts. Why was BP pushing so fast to get this well done? Because BP shortcuts on a previous well caused the drill head to break off. Therefore Deepwater Horizon had to abandon two weeks of drilling and start all over again. So BP wanted to "make up for lost time". Time that was lost because BP was pushing for short cuts - caused Deepwater Horizon to drill too fast.

We have little idea if current technologies are strong enough for fluids and gases this deep - under such higher pressures. And we know BP did nothing - no experiments - built no emergency response tools - tested nothing - for failures at this depth.

What do we know? This entire failure is directly traceable to the attitudes, direction, philosophy, and demands imposed from the highest levels of BP management. BP was driven first and foremost by profit - not the product. Same pressures that killed so many workers in a BP TX refinery. Same pressures that stopped routine maintenance on the Alaska pipeline resulting in multiple failures.

BP had no knowledge of what to do. Exxon had to teach BP where to put dispersants. A cap that BP said they had instead took three weeks to design and build. Because no caps existed. And then failed due to basic thermodynamic principles that would have been learned had BP tested this equipment years ago - as BP claimed.

Trying to recommend a solution is a fool's errand. It really mocks the intelligence of people who are desperately trying to solve this - despite BP management.

This well will be leaking all summer. Even today, new numbers are leaking out for the real size of this flow. Once the company is honest, then we will learn it was always between 1 million and 3 million gallons every day.

But I could be wrong now. I also said "Mission Accomplished" was more like $400 billion (when the popular opinion spin by propaganda experts said it would be $2billion). The actual cost was closer to $1trillion. Is this leak greater than 3 million gallons per day? (Navy skimmer boats recover a massive 1200 gallons in each load.)

Now let's add another fact that nobody is discussing. What is a dispersant? A chemical that connects each molecule of water to a molecule of oil. It does nothing to eliminate that oil. Puts it at various depths in the ocean. Simply makes an oil slick appear smaller. Dispersants are promoted by propaganda as a solution - which it is not. The oil is still there. Just spread out more.

Since when does a relief well have to intersect the busted well? What relief wells do is give that oil reservoir someplace else to go than up the busted pipe. Duh, tw. But yeah, it'll take until August to get there.

Petroleum never stays where it was made. You have petroleum source rocks, and you have subsurface geology that traps accumulations of petroleum, anticlines, salt domes, and so on.

UG, that's not my understanding of what a relief well does.

It's not, the relief well(s) have to intersect the first bore and plug it.

Who spilled the coffee?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AAa0...eature=channel

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6538 I'm sure if some of you are smart enough to search aroung this site, you'll find about relief wells. I'm not :smack:

You need to do these things properly -that's tff to be lost in a mysterious link

Blog from the WSJ.

WH Takes Cues from Liberal Think Tank on Spill
Link
Delegation, coincidence or ???

I am too lazy to check upstream to see if anyone else has already posted this amusing photograph.

it deserves to be posted more than once.

BP Deepwater Oil Spill - Energy and Commerce Committee's Letter Outlining Risky Practices (The Oil Drum)


The letter itself is, to put it simply, pretty ballin': they're highlighting a selection of technical issues in which BP took extreme shortcuts to hasten and cheapen the drilling of the well, at the cost of safe design and good construction. I've heard Waxman and Stupak are good, but this is pretty great.

More angry picture humor:

Picture of oil heading in to Orange Beach, AL

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pict...zoomed-picture

ferfuxache - Apparently nothing can go even remotely right here.

LOL @ Clod.

And Halliburton was telling BP they were taking too many risks trying to hurry this one -- to save millions. They were already behind time...

Reuters.com

Link
Too many people and too many levels make these type of decisions.
What a shame - How much of the coastline, how man jobs, how many businesses ... could have been spared.

And the disappointment continues.
Its almost like a revelation to some.

Hard to read some of the comments even.

Obama disappoints from the beginning of his speech
By Eugene Robinson

Link
From a man whose opinions I have not always agreed with, but certainly respected.

Yeah, a holy crusade. Let's round up Pancho Sanza and charge the oil... maybe we can scare it back underground.

Was it useful to bring in the Chief of BP and rake him over the coals in front of a bunch of pissed off Congress people? Seems like they are more interested in the midterm elections than they are in finding solutions to the problems. A bunch of political grandstanding by both sides.

Well shit, aren't all congressional hearings political grandstanding? :eyebrow:

They are, but damm they take up a lot of taxpayer dollars, they get a lot of air time, and they really no longer serve a useful purpose. So why have them?

My experience with people from Congress has been nothing but dog and pony shows, when I was on active duty.

They demonstrated a very important point. This BP top executive knew nothing about the business. He - like the head of GM, Chrysler, AIG, Merrily Lynch, etc knew nothing about their business other than how to make the spread sheets say what they had to say.

Congress quickly identified a major problem. Earlier, executives from the other oil companies not only knew what the business does. Each also demonstrated knowledge of what is necessary to operate oil wells safely. Congress demonstrated why BP has had so many failures - and why the other majors have not.

From Rigzone
Many contractors stand ready to help save the Gulf of Mexico, but rigid insurance requirements are thwarting their efforts. Contractors are required to purchase specific liability, pollution and federally mandated workers' compensation coverages designed for employees working on, around or near waterways. I think this is the Jones act. IMHO BB.To aid contractors with the requirements, MarketScout has developed OSCAR (Oil Spill Cleanup and Remediation) to provide a comprehensive insurance solution for contractors working to clean the British Petroleum oil spill. Four leading energy insurance companies are participating in OSCAR. MarketScout is the manager and founder of OSCAR.

I'm sure they'er doing this from the bottom of their pocket book.

A few questions I have from watching CNN last night.

Why is a foreign co. drilling in gulf? Well they won the bid. So can China, etc. others bid?

How many deep water rigs does BP own? I have other things to do to answer this.

Cooper (cnn) was talking to a contractor about the rig Atlantis. ( perhaps BP owns 65 % of this rig.)
WTF does this contractor do? Was he a contractor for the cooks, galley hands or cleanup hands? I'll make a wild ass guess that there 50 support contractors involved with a project of that magnitude.

A friend of mine, a plumbing contractor, won a bid to replace some piping on some oil barges they use on the Delaware river. He had to buy some outrageously expensive insurance, to do that work.

Anadarko points finger at BP on Gulf oil spill
HOUSTON (AP) - Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which owns a quarter of BP PLC' (BP)s blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, late Friday blasted BP "reckless decisions and actions" that led to the well's explosion.

Pancho Sanza?

A bit farther along:

Hmm. Looks like somebody saw which major party's adherents were doing the fucking up, doesn't it?

From here.