DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum 'Top kill' fails to stop flow of oil, BP says

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/29/us.gulf.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1

'Top kill' fails to stop flow of oil, BP says

Venice, Louisiana (CNN) -- BP's "top kill" attempt to stop the flow of oil from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico failed, the company's chief operating officer said Saturday.

The oil giant has tried for days to stop the the largest oil spill in U.S. history by pumping heavy, mudlike drilling fluid into a ruptured oil well, a method known as "top kill."

The next option is to place a custom-built cap known as the "lower marine riser package" over the leak, the company's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles said. BP crews were working Saturday to ready the materials for that option should it become necessary, he said.

"We've been prepping that all along in case we need to move to that option," he said. "People want to know which technique is going to work, and I don't know."

And if "lower marine riser package" were to fail, he said, BP engineers would try placing a second blowout preventer on top of the first, which failed to cut of the oil flow after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig. The failed blowout preventer is a 48-foot-tall, 450-ton apparatus that sits atop the well 5,000 feet underwater.

Meanwhile, teams in Louisiana were working Saturday on a clean-up project aimed at protecting coastal marshes while BP continues its efforts to stop oil from gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser has said that machines would suck oil out of marshes Saturday after crews determined where to deploy them.

"We will begin to clean up some of those areas that fell by the wayside for the last couple weeks," he said.

Oil giant BP's focus has been trying to put a stop to what officials say is the largest oil spill in U.S. history, with as many as 19,000 barrels of crude gushing into the ocean daily.

By Sunday morning the company could know whether the "top kill" procedure -- pumping heavy drilling mud into the breached oil well at high pressure -- is working, said Robert Dudley, BP's managing director.

"It's like an arm-wrestling match of two equally strong forces," he said.

Government scientists on Thursday said as many as 19,000 barrels (798,000 gallons) of oil were spewing into the ocean every day, making this disaster perhaps twice the size of the Exxon Valdez incident.

Previously, BP officials and government scientists had said 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of crude were flowing out daily.

"This is clearly an environmental catastrophe," BP CEO Tony Hayward said Friday. "There's no two ways about it."

Under intense political pressure to take control of the situation, President Obama toured the region on Friday.

"We want to stop the leak, we want to contain and clean up the oil and we want to help the people in this region return to their lives and livelihoods as soon as possible," the president told reporters.

About 25 percent of the Gulf of Mexico exclusive economic zone has been put off limits, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and fishermen are worried the gushing oil will take a more serious toll than Hurricane Katrina did in 2005.

"Katrina was nothing but rain, water and wind. This is poison. It's gas," oysterman Arthur Etienne said.

Obama said Friday that federal officials were prepared to authorize moving forward with "a portion of" an idea proposed by local officials, who want the Army Corps of Engineers to build a "sand boom" offshore to keep the water from getting into the fragile marshlands.

That did not satisfy Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has advocated immediate construction of the booms. Noting in a written statement that 107 miles of the state's coast have been oiled, he said, "We continue to ask federal officials to approve our entire sand-boom plan from the northern Chandeleurs to the Isle Dernieres chain."

Obama said he has directed federal officials to triple the manpower in places where oil has hit shore or appears within a day of doing so.

I say we kick BP out of this country.

This whole thing is breaking my heart on a daily basis.

When I was in my early 20's, I spent 5 years working for Standard Oil (SOHIO) in an oil refinery in my home town. Every single day, I saw the inescapble toxic, corrosive, unhealthy effects of petrochem technology. Lifers in the plant who were just hitting their late 40's/early 50's looked like they were 65 years old. The noxious smells were everywhere. Because I worked for OM&S (Oil Movement & Storage), I was part of the only mobile "unit" in the refinery.... which meant that I was automatically a member of the First Response Fire Brigade. My first firefight was in response to a line blowout at L.I.U. (Light products Integrated Unit) Flames were shooting out 50 ft from the line breech under pressure. In essence, it was a supercharged flame-thrower attached to a bomb that could potentially wipe out a 10th of the county, if uncontrolled.

We were well-trained and professional, and we contained the fire by shutting down flow control valves, re-routing product, and snuffing the fire (3 stories up in the air) with high-density foam. It took no fewer than 30 people working in close concert to avert a potential on-ground disaster. The roar from that flame plume at the blowout site sounded like a jet engine when we rolled up in the fire trucks to the blowout site.

When the fire was out and the OSHA inspectors were called in, we had to accompany the officials, and give them a play-by-play accounting of the incident. When I saw the burn site, I almost threw up my lunch on the spot. I felt no fear during the firefight, but what I saw that next day, freaked me to my core. I could see the feed line to the fractionating tower bowed like a well-cooked strand of spaghetti. This was schedule #160 stainless, folks- an 8-inch diameter pipe, with walls 3/4 of an inch thick.

That's when I realized just how unnatural and dangerous this product is to work with. It was also the moment at which I realized that we only had partial knowledge of (and control over) this substance. And I was on the high-tech refining/fractionating end of things. Breakin' it down is A LOT more complicated than pumping it out of the earth's crust.

____________________

I smelled smells that should only be reserved for Dante's 7th Infernal Ring. I saw unit operators who tossed around numbers like +1400 degrees like we talk about pocket change. I saw friends age 5 years for every 1.5 they spent in that hell hole. I never actually saw a man die, but it's only because I was lucky enough to be working a different shift on those days.

The year after I quit the job, BP bought our local refinery. Things steadily went downhill for the next 8 years, until it was again sold to Husky Oil. Colleages with whom I stayed in touch talked about increased demands for production, lowered safety oversight, and overall corner-cutting policies that made it an even worse place to work than when I was there.

Even back then (1979-1982), I was already advocating the initiative to find alternative sources of energy. That was 30+ years ago now, and it seems that we're still motgaging our future planetary health against the immediate needs of a world who's tech focus (and indeed entire economy) is still based on 120 year-old technology.

_______________


Don't get me wrong here. I'm not some knee-jerk "Environmental Wacko." I drive my car like everyone else. I use Saran Wrap (compliments of SOHIO/Vistron acylonitirile technology) to preserve my food, and I use plastic bins on my deck to protect my outdoor cooking gear from the elements.

What I am saying is an extension of what I was thinking 30 years ago: weaning ourselves from such a toxic and dangerous material is in our long-term best interests. We'll probably never be totally free of it, but if we can find alternatives to oil that will allow us to maintain/improve our quality of life, don't we have to at least start trying?

It's a noxious, poisionous, volatile 'natural' resource... and it's holding our nation hostage for as long as we choose to base our personal habits and standard of living on it.

This environmental disaster should truly slam home to us the need for finding some other fuel to power our economy. I just don't see how we can continue in this fashion.... I really don't.

Change is hard. Inertia (even static inertia) is powerful. It will take a supreme effort to change the direction of our path, but it simply must be done. Oil, by nature, has always been a finite resource, due to the length of time it takes to naturally occur. At our rate of consumption, it's only a matter of a few decades before change becomes inevitable by default.

Why not put on the big push now? At best, it will take 10 years from now for viable alternatives to make it into the mainstream of daily life (best-case scenario). 30 years have already been squandered/limped through since I made my personal observations at the Standard Oil Lima Refinery.

How many decades more are we going to wait? How many more can we afford to wait?

Quote:

---

History tells us that due to the ultimate failings of the human condition, we aren't really going to do anything until it virtually IS too late. Only when we're at the brink will smarts outweigh greed. Until then, the almighty dollar combined with human complacency will keep us from doing anything of the sort.

---

It's killing me, 'Toad... one day at a time.

Even as a callow youth, with most of my mind focused upon pot, paydays and 'puss-ee,' I could see this coming. I'm no genius or deep thinker, but it was plain to me, even back then.

Sad to think that the pursuit of a dollar could make high-level oil executives even stupider (and hornier) than me.


[shakes head slowly]

The only way this blowout is going to be fixed is by relief wells which are months away from happening.. They are trying the same failed methods of the iaxtcha oil spill...

I need me some oil........

Forced to sleep in a bed made by someone else.......

Where was that compromise.....

?????

We should be full out on nuclear.

Wind and solar are nice supplements .... but they will never provide for the energy needs of this country.

I also wanted to add something here about the administration response to this disaster ....

What they hell are they thinking?

If I see a massive disaster of this proportion ..... and there are several possible solutions, but no certainty which will work ..... I'm telling BP to get them all ready to go at a moment's notice. Why are we waiting 3 .... 4 .... 5 days ..... a week ... between different failed attempts to plug this thing. They are talking about the next thing they will try now that this one has failed ..... why isn't it in place and ready to go already? Why wait? Once this method had failed, they should have been ready to go with the next attempt instead of talking about it, and "planning" it. The planning should have been done already.

It's been 40 days .... and how many different things have been tried? I find it unbelievable that we aren't pulling in every resource to try and resolve this immediately. President Obama can talk about not wanting to have too many cooks .... but a different perspective might not be the worst idea ever. Obviously the administration along with whichever countries they are working with haven't managed to come up with a solution.

It's almost like they want a massive disaster. I do suppose that it could be politically useful depending on one's political slant.

All due respect to you, YTown....


...but I can't imagine in even MY my craziest moments, an administration- any American administration- that actually WANTS to preside over a country in the throes of a disaster such as this.

I can't imagine ANY crazyass slant or spin that could turn such a tragedy into short-term political capital.

This is a cataclysmic environmental pile of crap, pure and simple... and there just ain't no way I can see any 'power that be' using it to any advantage.

There is no advantage to crapping in one's own water supply, no matter how deftly one tries to spin it.

This sucks for The Gulf, BP, America (as a whole), and the Obama Administration... all at the same time.

At times like these, politics take a back seat. Survival becomes the order of the day.


Now... about your assertion that we should be full-out nuclear: I agree- up to a point. BUT- in keeping with 'Toad's (pretty accurate) assertion regarding Human Nature, and my personal assessment of the oil industry, I must conclude that our approach to nuclear energy follows the same rubric... and the environmental risks associated with nuclear energy are even more lethal (and long-term) than the ones that Big Oil represent.

I've been here on' Earth One' through Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island. Neither were any prettier than what we've got going now.

I confess I don't have the answers... but I can confess at the same time, my absolute conviction that the status quo AIN'T the answer.

'Smart nukes' are what we have in the immediate future, true that. But we should also be thinking beyond that.

Personally, I'm going to buy some shares in First Solar. Even if it doesn't pay me back in my lifetime, I rather like the idea of supporting a company which strives to wean us off the teat of oil.

just sayin'

Ha one poster said "I'd feel better if gw was in office" I know I'm drunk but how much have you been drinking?

What a sad joke this situation is. Time for America to flex some, any kind of muscle.

What a fun little disaster..........

Lets all take a breathe...

Breathe.....

It....

IN...........

LOVE IT>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

All a testimony to the risks with MODERNIZATION........

Its a compromise we all made........

Or our fathers made......

Or our fathers made......

Or our fathers made.......

Or our fathers made.......

You get the picture.

So much fun and excitement here in the present day.

LOLOLOLLOLLOOLLOOLLOOL

SCREWGEORGE

for all you sons of god.......Its all in Leviticus

(For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled)

Made that bed..........sleep in it son.

I believe Ytown isn't necessarily looking for the administration to come up with the ideas to finish the job, but more so looking for any sort of leadership from a man who has never led anything in his entire life. Obama seems to have no idea how to put a face of leadership on this problem. I suspect it's because he doesn't want to deal with the political fallout of the failings of gov't. He knows that gov't isn't equipt to handle a problem such as this (that's why it's being compared to Katrina). Thus, putting his face out front in this situation would cause the people to blame him even further the more failings occur. However, we all know that a real leader is someone who makes decisions not based upon popularity our possible negative outcomes, but based upon what's right. That's why you won't see Obama putting his face out front as the leader in this situation - too much of a political grenade. He doesn't want to be holding it when it goes boom.

Solar power ia also limited to certain parts of the country because of the need (obviously) for extended periods of clear sky sunshine. Wind power requires steady and powerful wnds. That limits the places such can be built.

I also worry about this .. let's say we go to solar as the technology improves. We add more and more solar panels to the lmited areas where it will give the most bang for the buck.

Suddenly, those areas become target #1 for a terrorist with a nuclear weapon and a grudge. Take out a sizable chunk of the US powergrid in one attack ...... and cripple the US for years, and maybe even decades to come. (If the area is his with a weapon that leaves the area contaminated and inaccessable for years on end)

I think that everyone can agree that, for now anyway, US energy policy needs to unclude every possible option. I can see economic incentives given to those who are willing to invest in newer and better techniques for energy production .... but am leary of policies that attempt to 'grow' segments of industry by penalizing other areas. In the end, the companies don't suffer as a result ..... but rather, the people who receive higher bills as a result suffer.

Oh ... and to the poster who responded to my passing comme nt about GWB .... yeah, I'm serious that I'd feel one hell of a lot better about having some people in the White House who know and understand what the hell is happening there ..... and who have knowledge and expertice regarding hos to handle such a disaster. This administration comes off as trying to tell the experts in the oil industry how to do their jobs ..... and last time I checked ..... not one of them had 1 day of experience ..... or even a clue.


The President said that he is responsible .... so I hold him respionsible for the worst economic disaster in decades. I hold him responsible for not bringing in every expert willing to help. I hold him responsible to tying things up so that each attempt takes days and even a week in between rather than having the next attempt ready to go immediately after a different technique fails. I do not think that any admnistration could have mis- handled (this crisis any worse ..... and I do not believe that any administration could have been more inept then this one. Yes ... the President's response to this disaster does make me wish for a GWB in the White House.

Well cheaper solar panels would allow more people to add solar to their homes, and thereby reduce the needs of outside power during certain periods of time. This means less power plants can serve a wider base without changing a dang thing.

I fully see a future where power plants are supplemental energy sources and providers more to commercial and municipal applications rather than residential. The company I work for has looked into solar panels to place on the warehouse roof to run the warehouse and office lights.

You're right we should have started investing in alternative fuels 50 years ago.

The problem? Special interests influencing government.

Everyone hates the government dabbling in the free market's business, well, what about the opposite?

"The free market solves all woes" is a load of crap, just as much as full-on socialism is a load of crap as well.

The truth is somewhere in between but no one's willing to reach a common ground on it.

I live in NE Ohio.

A factory or home could put up solar panels, and would wind up cleaning leaves off them for 2 months ..... and seeing them be almost totally useless because of snow and cloudy weather for another 3. Add in rainy days and such ..... and the return on investment shrinks dramatically. Then add in the once or twice per year hail .... and the probability of damage increases even more, and insurance costs rise accordingly.

I could see this in certain parts of the country ..... but probably not in an area with lots of rain, snow, and lots of storms. i also worry about absolutely killing areas of the country .... like my home .....if manufacturing energy becomes dependent upon the use of solar energy. This area would go from struggling to dead. many others would follow.

One idea I had heard about that sounded kind of interesting is solar satellites that would use wireles transmission of the energy collected back to the Earth. That would eliminate the lessen the need to build traditional power plants on the ground ..... and could allow for storage/transmission facilities instead. That would seem to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. No cloudy days in space.

If I were in charge of the electric power grid ... or if I were in industrial development and looking for a project with a real future .... I would be looking into a means of storing and accessing energy with minimal loss, and a bang for the buck factor that would allow for deployment at a reasonable cost when savings are factored in.

It's not going to work for every house, in every situation, but there are other alternatives as well, and for the power I save with solar panels, allows them to feed that power to the grid for other areas that need it.

If we chose not to do something because everyone doesn't benefit, then we'd never get anything accomplish.

There's a company that is putting out an ink that can be sprayed on to items such as onto windows like window tint, printed on paper through an inkjet printer, that works as a solar collector. It's due to be available in 3-5 years. Even if it wouldn't feed your whole house, any little bit helps.

Heck the difference between solar pool heating and electric pool heating for me was $150/mo. Granted during the coldest months of the year, the panels don't receive enough sun to heat the pool to a decent temp for us, but we don't care to swim then anyway.

It just seems to me that over-production and waste of electricity is a huge problem ..... maybe even a bigger problem than the generation of electricity itself.

The electrical generation system in this country is a giant gamble each and every day. They guess how much power will be needed .... and generate that amount ... breaking it down by hours, weather, and a billion other factors ..... and they better be close, because if they aren't, they either black someone out .... or (most commonly as I understand it) just generate unused electricity.

The free market is simply no one pointing guns at each other.

Corporations without the gun of the state would be different in terms of liability and funding.

If it is coming out of a pipe and not a hole, why don't they just put a larger pipe with a valve over the existing pipe and close the valve ?

This whole thing pisses me off in general. Seems like they spend more time pointing fingers then actually doing anything about it.

That, or use some sort of super tough material to create an inflatable "plug" that they could get down in there ...... inflate ... and then use their cement/mud technique to finish 'top plugging" it. They could insert large solid pipes through the site at a 60 degree angle, criss-srossed through the flow .... then get the inflatables under the brace to hold them in place ..... inflate ..... and then use their other techniques as a more permanent solution.

It just seems like the biggest problrm is getting the force of the oil shut off just long enough to let a more conventional technique to succeed. I would think that soimething like that .... or a super inflating foam .. or something that would create a very temporary plug would allow the other things they have tried to maybe work.

I also don't understand why they cannot use some sort of pipeline structure that they could build nearby ....... with a pipeline off of that which would divert the worst of the oil into a containment vessel ... and then they could pick the damn thing up and set it down on top of the leaking site. It might not capture all of the oil .... but it might get a lot of it.

It just seems to me that they are using conventional thimking when a less conventional answer might just be the right one.

When some posters mention clean energy I am reminded of a show I saw that talked about this attempt at it in Spain

solar power tower in Spain

Why don't they build some sort of non-permeable sock sized to cover the leak but small enough to keep the pressure high? Fill the tube with water, sink it to the site, top it with a some sort of directional nozzle on top of a floatilla and pour the pressurized oil into a line of waiting tankers.

Duh...

Somebody has to put their finger over the hole first...

Actually, I'm a big fan of the MOAB idea.... we did some rough calculations on its effects in lab - and the environmental impact is very small.

The idea, for those who aren't familiar, is that the explosion creates a wave of very high pressure, which travels down the well-head. The high pressure wave is actually unimportant, but all high pressure waves are followed by very low pressure waves. As the low pressure wave travels down the wellhead, it causes the dirt around the wellhead to cave in, closing the hole. Russia has reportedly employed this tactic several times during the USSR period to plug oil leaks.

You don't actually need a MOAB size explosion - a small tactical nuclear weapon positioned near the well head would do the trick. The only reason you even need a nuclear (as opposed to conventional) bomb is because the explosion needs to come from a small point, as opposed to from a larger region (so that the pressure wave is coherent).

The radiation from a nuclear bomb is negligible, and contains mostly gamma-rays, which will only travel a couple hundred yards through the water before being absorbed. The long term radiation damage is very unimportant - at worst there would be a no fishing zone within some miles of the bombs location....but I don't think that would even be necessary. The well's offshore location means that any wave that reaches land will be very negligible, so there is no tidal risk.

Of course the major problems are two-fold

1.) The military has to do it, not BP

2.) The government would probably rather not set off a nuclear bomb - I believe this is also against the CTBT (though the US hasn't signed it)

BP should consider exploring the use of Mighty Putty. That stuff'll plug any leak.

lets give it up to the United States, inventors of the shutoff valve, and emergency shutoff valve. Way to think that one through

I suggested further back in this post to build a giant concrete box, and place it over the area. Have a valve in the top that they can attach to and suck the oil from.

They tried the bell Idea, which is similar, but much more restricted in size, and caused freezing. What I'm talking about would be like putting a large bucket over a running sprinkler head. The pressure is too much to just plug with your finger, but the bucket contains the spray.

Now granted they would have to start sucking water/oil out of it, or once it fills to capacity the water will start to dig it's way out under the edges, but containing the oil and making it available to control should have been the first step.

They have just been to worried about retrieving the oil, and not necessarily stopping it all together.