Track the Oil Leak

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I've found a live webcam of the leak.
http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live ... am=stream3
http://www.energyboom.com/policy/oil-sp ... ly-leaking

There is also the NASA imagery of it.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/featur ... index.html

Pretty disturbing.

And this...
http://www.lanewsmonitor.com/news/BPs-E ... 275157518/

mathgirl, i beeen following this for a few days as well, it seems that TOP KILL procedure didnt do much to stop the flow of oil from the BOP on the ocean floor, i foudn the website wee i was able to make suggestions to unificed command at BP about ideas on how to stop the leak of contain the surface oil, so.. I submitted my idea, now just to see how long it will take the guys to figure it out, implement it and fix the leaking BOP and riser.

lab-rat and other geeky science loving aspies, i'll give a hint, crude oil is NOT multi-viscosity oil, my idea involves taking advantage of the properties of the crude. technique i suggested is commonly used in plumbing and fixing pipes without having to shut off the water supply line)

today I was watching the live feed from the ROV, it seems nobody at unified command has thought of my idea or just don't know that it might work, no idea who's controlling the ROV but this morning at around 9:00 am EST (14:00 GMT time), but the operator of it had a circular saw attachment on the manipulator arm and it was cutting some clamp or hose off the BOP. then after that is has a scene of a big black plum of oil flowing freely up from the damaged stack (maybe they parked the ROV?? and gave up??) it is now 5:19 pm EST and its still in same spot (parked and showing black plumes coming out)


link to live feed from ROV:

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_interne ... tream.html

I keep thinking, can't they just put something very heavy that would sink over the darn thing to plug it? Or is the pressure of the oil coming from that leaked pipe way too high? How heavy would something have to be realistically to counteract that pressure?

I guess there's also the flow of water involved, making it necessary to make the sinking object heavier than the bare minimum necessary to resist the pressure.

The pressure of the oil is about 9000 psi. The pressure of the ocean against the flow of oil is about 2200-2300 psi, so the oil is still coming out with a force of about 6700-6800 psi. It was blowing all the drilling mud back out and that is why the top kill failed.

I would be interested to know if it would be possible to put a large nut on the end of the pipe, then an olive (ferrule) made of a soft metal such as brass. Then place on top a new pipe with a compression joint fitting. Then tighten the nut to create a seal. Then apply high preasure to the end of the new pipe with inert gas (N2). Next step would be to inject something like a fast acting epoxy into the well followed by a high early strength cement.

I am imagining that a undamaged pipe which is a straight still exists on the sea bed as part of the well.

Is this idea a silly one or does it have some merit ?

(edited once to remove a typo)

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

Oh so my idea was not total nonsense.

I think that the idea would not require any threads to be cut on the damaged equipment on the sea bed, the screw threads would only be on the big nut and the end of the new pipe. I choose brass as it would be softer than the pipe used for a oil well. I thought that an olive should never be much harder than the steel of the pipe. The olive would have to deform slightly when the thing is tightened to give the seal.

I think that my idea is better than trying to get a seal with two flanges, as the end of the pipe would need a flange to be welded on which would be a lot of work at the bottom of the sea.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

I think they are mad, for top hat reminds me of The Mad Hatter.

from a 21" pipe, Pi.R2, some 320 square inches, at 6800 psi. Two million pounds of lift from the thrust, plus oil and gas are lighter than water.

To keep it from forming Methane Ice, they will pipe in warm water, so the gas will expand, from heat and lower pressure.

Any reduction of pipe size from the 21" to the surface will increase pressure, and at the surface 14.2,psi, out of a pipe will come 10,000 psi gas and oil at a rates of millions of barrels a day.

Even if it was directed into the hold of a tanker, the gas let go, that would be what burned the rig, times a million. Humans cannot breath Methane for long, they die, and the volume would fill a Valdez size tanker every two or three days. A barrel of oil is a barrel at surface pressure, a barrel of gas is 1,000 barrels.

There is no way to continue through a hurricane, or to stop it once started.

I am a hundred miles away, we smell it, our wind comes from that direction. A Methane plume, cold gas moving over the surface, could be here in several hours.

It is both toxic and explosive.

To put this in tankers the pipe to the surface would have to be self supporting, one spark and it is a torch. The only to put it out would be sink it, and that might not work.

The rig that sank was 200 yard long, and had floats going down, it melted and sank? The floats were legs going down below the water, It should not have lost flotation on it's own, I think it was sunk to put out the fire.

As the rig burned this could have been stopped a hundred foot down, where divers could crimp the pipe shut. They had days to put a clamp on it, cut off the fuel, save the rig. .

There is a lot more to this story.

BP has plead the 5th.

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It sounds like you are coming up with similar figures as I am if this fails. On the plus side, this method of capping a leak has been around since the '50s....on dry ground.

Pipe drama topic

I was doing some on line research about oil rigs and off shore oil drilling and was dismayed at the risks involeved in this activity, all for the petroleum dependency/addiction of human beings. A disaster waiting to happen? There were already accidents on file--one in Europe and the Exxon Valdez catastrophe, the most recent. Competition for scarce resources is dangerous, and is a holdover from the days of imperialist pillaging and colonizing of many countries such as Africa, and the Far East.

The only good(?) that could possibly come out of this horror is to stop this deep water drilling, for as we dig further into the earth's crust, to mine the riches we crave, the resulting instability means there are more risks that threaten all life.

I wish I had a definitive solution for how to plug the leak. The links provided by Mathgirl reveal just how complicated this problem is. Sometimes a person has to think outside the box, that is the leak, and if I may venture a guess, perhaps fitting more pipleline to extend it out and away from the coastline, and to ease the pressure, and eventually having this pipe empty the gas and oil into a containment device of some sort might be an idea that could lead to something else.

The problem comes from taking an old surface technology and moving it offshore, deeper and deeper, till when it fails, none of the surface fixes work.

The second problem is government oversight that has to take the word of the overseen.

Countries that have nationalized oil have a government force that takes the lead, and they all call for the best of blowout preventers. This was caused by a lack of a $500,000 part. The one used likely cost half that, so for a savings of $250,000, BP did this, killed eleven, and made a real mess.

Even that blowout preventer seems to have been fake, used, no batteries, leaked, and failed on automatic, manual, and backup.

The next problem is the worst. Wells are drilled to 24" but only cased part way down.

The blowout preventer sits on a 21" casing, but the production pipe is 12", and runs deep. During drilling this is filled with mud, which holds back the pressure, being twice as dense as water.

After proving the well, bringing up some oil from the production pipe, the space between the casing and the production pipe is filled with concrete. An innertube is sent down to the bottom of the casing, that makes a seal between it and the production pipe. Then cement on top. This is what Halliburton did, and it failed. If it had worked we would be dealing with a 12" production pipe.

Top kill stopped because the mud was going into the rock strata, below the casing. This puts 9,000 psi on the outside of the casing, which could blow it out, and leave just a hole going down three and a half miles.

This tells me they did not sink the casing pipe deep enough, it is just a 21" tube in a 24" hole, held in place by the weight of the blowout preventer. There is no way to cement the outside, nothing connects it to the earth. No one wants to answer the question, how deep does the outer casing go?

As they were in the last stages, the 12" line is inside, and should run deep, down to the production zone, but since the cement failed, it is not connected to anything.

Shuting it down may not be possible, for it could spit out the casing, the oil having the force of a train, stopped dead, a hammer. Even if it held, nothing is stopping the oil from going around the outside of the casing. 9,000 psi will find a way.

Attaching a mile of pipe, bringing it to the surface, will add some back pressure, but oil and gas weigh less than water, so the flow will increase. It will come out of the top of the pipe faster than it now comes out the bottom.

This well seems unstopable, and only a relief well to draw off the pressure might work.

It took nine months to cap the Mexican well.

This disaster has equaled the 22,000,000 gallons that naturally seep out of the bottom of the Gulf every year, two Valdez, and have been leaking for longer than we have been watching.

For years the way to get rid of old motor oil was pouring it on fence lines. It did kill the grass, but a year or two later much stronger grass grew there.

Oil is organic, I have more worry about the million gallons of dish soap used to disperse it.

Some historic natural blowouts have left huge deposits, life continued.

On land, in Iraq, it left lakes of Bitinum, which was used to set the bricks of Babylon.

There is little we can put in the sea that something will not eat. The sewers of China are causing giant jellyfish along the coast of Japan. Cute little eight inch jellyfish now grow to six hundred pounds.

The Nitrates coming down America's Sewer, the Mississippi River, do a lot more damage.

Oil has been good to the Gulf Coast, most operators have near perfect safety records,

BP is outstanding for having more violations that all the other majors, several hunderd times as many.

They just pay the fines and continue. Fifteen dead in Texas City, now eleven more, where few have died working with other companies.

It is not the industry, it is just BP making everyone look bad. BP cuts corners, all the other companies constantly upgrade their safe and sane drilling, production, transport, refining, and pay well.

BP stands alone, pay bribes, pay fines, kill workers.

Everyone down here knows someone who works offshore, now we have caught the BP, Bad Player, and they are going to pay a lot of damages.

All of the other companies, all of the oil patch workers, stand together for a safe and productive Gulf.

The cameras are on. They just aren't using all ROVs at once all the time, and a couple of them seem broke. The cap seems to be offsetting the amount of extra oil being shot out by cutting the pipe, but other than that it's not working well. They didn't come up with a good enough method of sealing it.

At this point their best bet is to develop an atmospheric diving suit that can handle a depth of 5,000ft. So that they can send men down with the necessary dexterity to wrench on it.