Red made his fame as a fireman who specialized in extinguishing fires, leaving sealing the well to the company hacks once it cooled off enough for them to get near the thing.

I'd do exactly as BP is trying now, capturing the leak while attempting to drill an intercepting well, then pump cement in to plug the original bore.  That is a proven method to stop an uncontrolled well, at least at shallower depths.

What I would have done differently is simply to have a method to seal such leaks, already proven at or near that depth, ready to go in case of emergency, such as the "domes" they constructed during the last couple of weeks.  

What I see as totally inexcusable is why 4 or 5 of these domes, or whatever technology they meant when they told the MMS that they could handle it, wern't already sitting ready and waiting at BP's supply docks, so that they would be available at a moment's notice.  But then again, I doubt you'll find that part written down in the company procedure manual, so why should they have to think about that.

**********************
"The problem isn't finding the solution, its trying to get to the real question." BigInch
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

What I see as totally inexcusable is why 4 or 5 of these domes, or whatever technology they meant when they told the MMS that they could handle it, wern't already sitting ready and waiting at BP's supply docks, so that they would be available at a moment's notice.  But then again, I doubt you'll find that part written down in the company procedure manual, so why should they have to think about that.
  
I suppose when you start a project (building a rig) you don't start with a project in parallel (build a dome) in case the first project goes pear shaped

mmm...1500-2000bar on a well, 150bar water pressure
fitting a dome is like pushing a courk in a shaken champagne bottle

There's not so much a relation to building the rig and a dome, and I can separate those two tasks in my mind, but drilling a well at any depth should require a proven mitigation plan and the equipment needed to implement that plan available at least somewhere in the world, if not nearby.

I'll bet they had the drill pipe, mud and supply boats ready and waiting at their yards.  

But let's face facts.  Drilling depth technology has outpaced environmental control technology.  Before, they could wave the empty oil barrel and give from the full money barrel and ignore the consequences.  Now they have to admit it.  

The only good news about this is that green energy just got more competitive.

**********************
"The problem isn't finding the solution, its trying to get to the real question." BigInch
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

to put it in the right perspective:
allmost all humans have an index finger,conveniant to point away from you.In that, the responsible party is quickly cornered.
Wouldn't it be possible to shoot a missile straight in the bore of the well, or would there be to much debris on top to reach enough depth?
At a pace of 800 ton leakage/day of environmental loss of well capacity a fast solution should be preferred.

 

Perhaps a photon torpedo would work better under water.

**********************
"The problem isn't finding the solution, its trying to get to the real question." BigInch
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

lol
 

It would be funny, if it wasn't true.
We shouldn't make light of this situation.
It is a disaster all around.

**********************
"The problem isn't finding the solution, its trying to get to the real question." BigInch
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

I wasn't making light of the situation while suggesting the use of some kind of explosives.
putting a dome over a leak of 1500bar with a backpressure of 150bar.In order to get sealing pressure, the crude needs to be pumped out at a rate of 40 ton/hour to sea surface (to tanker 1500m discharge pipe)
then drill a side whole to drain the pressure
then pump concrete to a depth of 1500m, to fill the dome...
all provided good weather conditions...
remaining leak will be, below a concrete block

All,
     Bet the original risk assessment engineers for the drilling have made a hasty retreat - that is if any risk assessment was ever performed!!. If they are still around their rear ends must be giving it half crown/threepenny bits (Think it could be dollar/dimes - over the pond)

Closely followed by those who verified that the BOP was working when accepting the rig.  BOPs have a reliability issue, particularly in the UK, suggesting that BP could have (and should have) known better.


On a related note, I wonder what Tony Hayward's and Andy Inglis's bonuses will be this year?

Steve Jones
Materials & Corrosion Engineer
http://www.oilandgaspeople.com/cv/11499664
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/8/83b/b04
 

I have been wondering what changes legislation will be making in light of these unfortunate circumstances. And what Bp will be doing to compensate the people affected, I guess they will have to figure out who to point the finger at before they will decide who's pocket books will be affected. Does any one know what could have prevented this situation and Say if under the same circumstances in another part of the world would this have been nipped in the bud before such a complete failure would have occured???

pipelyer,
         One simple technique could have prevented this situation - don't drill at depths where the technology is not there to deal with ALL consequnces!!

DSB123,
i am affraid our hunger for more energy has made deep sea oil exploitation a profitable business.
the oil well leakage being collateral damage of a rig explosion/fire, which took the lives of 11 people, not the first to die at sea, not the last.Being surrounded by water, fire will remain the biggest disaster initiator.
I wouldn't have a clue, but i guess, while drilling a hole, concrete is used to fabricate a pipe, around the drill, while it's searching its way to an addittional depth of 5000m
reaching the well, the drill needs to be leakfree (?)retracted fore the same distance.the concrete pipe then gives foudation for a shut off valve, so the well can be exploited?
so the only thing being intact would be the concrete pipeline of about 5km?

The failure of the BOP is another mystery. I have heard that the BOP lacked the acoustic activator that some designs have. I also know that a BOP have a limited number of possible actions until the hydraulic fluid runs out - maybe the BOP was mal-operated during the explosion/fire and thus cant close unless hydraulic pressure is re-established?

Does anybody know if ROV's have been able to approach the BOP - or if it has been covered by debris/riser?

Best regards

Morten

Just from what I've seen on CNN, ROVs have been trying to operate the hydraulic activation valves for weeks now.  One BOP might have partially stroked, as there was some reduction in leak rate, but could not shear through, or the seals failed, possibly due to distortion of the column, or a joint from the drill string is caught up inside jambing further action.  Hydrates have plugged the first capture dome, so that didn't work.  

Maybe the smaller dome that they're trying now will keep the velocity high enough so that the hydrates will be swept along, but that's pure supposition on my part.

**********************
"The problem isn't finding the solution, its trying to get to the real question." BigInch
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

what makes hydrates been able to clog a dome but not a well?

The lower temperature around the dome.  If you can get the well stream to the surface before it has time to cool down, you can avoid crystalization.

**********************
"The problem isn't finding the solution, its trying to get to the real question." BigInch
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

so the oil burst out of the pipe, expands (velocity drop) cools down (4degC) and forms crystals
I was just thinking up loud, to use the fenomena to block the pipe, but maybe the tendency exist to control the leak and exploit the well, once the mess is cleared rather than sealing off the well to minimise the environmental impact, risking the well needs to be redrilled in order to exploit it.On land water (icing) and expanding CO2 is often used to block in a pipe with leaking valves.A hottap is often used to redirect a flow, without interupting it.I guess those techniques wouldn't be available at that depth?

I've had hot taps done in a chamber at a hundred meters depth, but at 5000 ft, it might as well be on the outside surface of the International Space Lab, except with 2182 psia ambient pressure.

If you've ever tried to turn a wrench on a nut while scuba diving at only 50 ft depth without floating away and dropping and losing the wrench in the mud, you'd still have nowhere near the idea of the difficulty of doing even the simplest kind of work at 5000 ft.

**********************
"The problem isn't finding the solution, its trying to get to the real question." BigInch
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

I did spend 6.5 years effective at sea, as a chief engineer of which about 3 years in the offshore business (thunder horse,...), I've seen the capabilities of an ROV and there shortcomings.
a bolt and nut would work perfectly in the hands of a human.
working with an ROV on the depth, you probably loose a hand already, occupying it grabbing hold of something, fighting the currents.then you have the hydraulics moving the arms, affected by the surrounding pressure, which makes a smooth move of the operator, translate in to a spastic move of the ROV arms, then you got a long umbillical which is subject to current and causes drag of the ROV.
I do have a clue...
but again, are we dealing with sealing of a well or leaving the opportunity to reexploiting it?
 

I heard on the news today they are playing with the idea to pump concrete into the pipe....
mighty powerfull pump needed...
the (failing) main shut off valve would that be a ball valve (eg a 90deg swing to operate)?
what dimensions has this vertical riser (which is fractured at 3 places)?
how far is the first fracture away from the main shut of valve?
does it really comes down to the (un)ability to screw/unscrew a nut?

I think this one will be sealed ... and never never never reopened;  at least while there is still oil to be had from grinding olives.  A bit of a Pandora's Box this one is .. I think .. I think.  I'm afraid there's going to be a lot of fishemen that will thinking this oneis the GOM's Chernobyl, when its finally over and done with.  If it goes on for another 90 days, the potential is somewhere between 2.5 and 13 Valdez equivalents, depending on fnal concentrations over the area affected.

**********************
"The problem isn't finding the solution, its trying to get to the real question." BigInch
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

another 90 days and we got a new hurricane season....

OMG!  Been away from the GOM so long now, I managed to forget about that.  Hopefully they will be late in arriving this year.

Just noticed that.  Is it a coincidence that rearranging OMG = GOM ??  

**********************
"The problem isn't finding the solution, its trying to get to the real question." BigInch
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

CH5OH as far as i understood it they are going to drill a new well that will intercept the existing well, and then pump concrete into the well from this new well.

Best regards

Morten

PS: GOM=Grand Old Man= Mississippi river?

Morton,  That's a good one too.

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco
http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

Quote (pipelyer):

I have been wondering what changes legislation will be making in light of these unfortunate circumstances.

I'm actually pretty fearful of what changes of legislation will come about in light of these circumstances.  I see no benefit to having legislators try to become engineers.  We can sit and argue back and forth about well design all day long, but when we step back from the problem, we all have to admit that regardless of legislation, we are still looking at billion-dollar machines drilling holes in the seafloor.  

Legislation can only make things worse.  Do we really think that some legislators are going to pass laws that provide procedures that are better than the practices developed by API (American Petroleum Institute)?  My opinion is no.  What we can guarantee is that laws will be passed to help political cronies, while billions of dollars of excess costs will be passed to the consumer through higher prices for the purpose of addressing superfluous legislation.  

You can pass all the laws in the world and you're still going to have a big machine poking holes in the seafloor.  Legislation does not keep machines from breaking.  

ASME and UL were both founded by the insurance industry.  Do we think that politicians are going to do better?  

Engineering is not the science behind building.  It is the science behind not building.   

The mechanism that you describe has gotten us this far.  Which has probably got a  lot to do with how this situation developed.  At least they split the MMS, one half will make regulations, the other half will police.  That's somewhat better.  At least the fox and the chickens now have a short fence between them.

The net effect is that legislation does not keep machines working either.  The BOP is required by legislation now and apparently wasn't in proper working order, according to its maker, Cameron.

ASME and UL, etc. etc. etc. are all somewhat at least as biased towards their respective industries as legislation is towards lobby effects.  With that, you're never even sure that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  I just do what I think is right.  I never worry about what the legislation and regulations say, as long as I exceed their minimum requirements every time I think I need to.  That way my designs and operations are as safe as I can make them, rather than what some no-nothing lobbiest or legislator or building code thinks.  Those things are looking at some average design requirements.  I'm looking at the nuts, bolts and welds and the depth of pipe in the ground.  If I need an air strike, I call it in.

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy"
.... Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

CH5OH, while I have little expertise in this field I was just curious, is the leaking oil pressure (if shut-off at the bottom?) "1500bars"(I calculate this figure as nearly 22,000psi)?  

rconner,I am not a well expert myself, but I have been told,
when they first start to exploit a well, pressure would be something like 2000-2500bar, after relative short a period, the pressure drops down a bit and remains about constant for a longer period.I assume this has to do that a well contains not only oil but also gas (methane)
the 1500bar is a guesstimate.

I understand that there was legislation to limit liability as a result of the Valdez problem and that a cap of $75M is in place.

Obama keeps stating that BP has accepted full financial responsibility; I haven't seen anything from BP... as a business, with responsibility to shareholders, I would have difficulty accepting financial responsibility beyond the legislated $75M... Also BP keeps getting blamed, but the BOP and rig were by others...

Could make for interesting legal times... Has anyone come across a statement from BP that unequivacally states that they will pay for the cleanup? or that the $75M cap is not in effect?

Dik  

http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9033791&contentId=7062345

Steve Jones
Materials & Corrosion Engineer
http://www.oilandgaspeople.com/cv/11499664
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/8/83b/b04
 

Thanks for the response, Steve.

"BP will pay all necessary response costs and is committed to paying legitimate claims for other loss and/or damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon incident."

I've been involved with a lot of work for Insurance Companies and Lawyers and a lot could fall through what they consider 'necessary' and 'legitimate'... and have the claims, to date, exceeded the $75M cap? kicking in the legitimate component, namely, "I'm sorry, your clame has been disallowed, by law, BP is not required to cover this claim."

Dik

Hey it's a start, but you're right, we'll have to see what legit, appropriate really means.

In any case, if anyone's got a claim, it'd be better to get in before they hit that 75M.

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" ..Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com/

That should be 'claim' not 'clame'... one too many beer, maybe...

9t about 3:45 PM CDST the live picture of the leaks (CNN) at the bent drilling riser were occluded with a cloud of mud/oil/whatever coming from below the leaking area.  There has been no explanation as of yet other than the NYT is reporting that they have stopped pumping mud for the second time.

FYI{
The mud weight is quoted at 16 pounds.

The pressure they are worried about exceeding is 17,000 psig. This is supposedly related to the drilling riser.

One statement said that that they have 30,000 hp worth of pumps available while another source said that the pumps were capable of 30,000 psig, take your pick.

 

16 lbs/gal I presume.
I think it's probably both 30,000 psi and 30,000 Hp
split between 4 pumps 7.5ksi and 7.5kHp each?
in groups of 2 (one group is standby, or emergency capacity)
and can be configured in series or parallel

series  parallel
30000   30000 hp
30000    17000 psi
36000    20400 ft head
7855     4451 hydraulic Hp per cfs
0.7      eff
11221     6358 brake Hp per cfs
2.7      4.7 cfs total capacity
20.0     35.3 gps total capacity
1200     2118 gpm total capacity
28.6     50.4 bbls/m total capacity
41143    72605 bbls/day total capacity
20571   36302 bbls/day each

Flow Range capacity 10.2 KBOPD to 72.6 BOPD

10286 BOPD: Half capacity of one pump
20571 BOPD: Maybe too many units and press for this config
Or for once there is more than enough standby capacity.
36302 BOPD: one group running, one group on standby
41143 BOPD: again prob too much pipe press for this flow
72604 BOPD: Oh Crap Emergency capacity
 
 

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO, BP

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" ..Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://vir

Here is the scheme of things supposedly as it now stands.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2819681720100528?type=marketsNews

A strange place to find information.  Go down to the "Oil Drum" Leak header and read more.

http://www.petsstatus.com/archive/lower+marine+riser+package.html

BigInch
Here is primer on Drilling fluids.  
Thanks for the analysis.  The CEO has been asked about some of the pressures involved several times and his comments are always that everyone is too busy to provide any outside information.

http://www.wdcexploration.com/what_we_do/pdf/drilling_fluid_fundamentals.pdf

Addenda:
Early on in the reporting of this event there was an interview with a survivor of the accident who was in a position to give some of the preliminary events.  One of his comments was that some time before the event happened a mud pump operator reported that he was finding relative large chunks of rubber on his filter screens on the returning mud.   This gentleman said that this rubber could have only come from the "annular valve" at the top of the BOP.  As I understand it the purpose of this valve is to seal the annular space between a restricting bushing and the drill pipe when they want to shut the well off from the riser.  He stated that someone inadvertently pulled about 15' of drill pipe through the closed valve.  This valve acts like a hydraulic collet.  

My in-laws who work offshore had been put under a "Don't Tell if Asked" policy.   To get close to the truth about about the events preceding the accident it would take a criminal indictment to get even half truths.   Have them brought before a Federal Grand Jury and have a jar of Petroleum Jelly on the table.  


 

Here is the scheme of things supposedly as it now stands.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2819681720100528?type=marketsNews

A strange place to find information.  Go down to the "Oil Drum" Leak header and read more.

http://www.petsstatus.com/archive/lower+marine+riser+package.html

BigInch
Here is primer on Drilling fluids.  
Thanks for the analysis.  The CEO has been asked about some of the pressures involved several times and his comments are always that everyone is too busy to provide any outside information.

http://www.wdcexploration.com/what_we_do/pdf/drilling_fluid_fundamentals.pdf

Checkout BigInch's reply of May 29 @ 6:53 in thread311-2715: sun java cerificate is achivable in 3 months?.  One or two hard numbers from BP and his analysis would tell you exactly what's going on.  Apparently they are giving this information to anyone not even the US Government. Our government people at all levels measure the money received from the oil patch in barrels.

Addenda:
Early on in the reporting of this event there was an interview with a survivor of the accident who was in a position to give some of the preliminary events.  One of his comments was that some time before the event happened a mud pump operator reported that he was finding relative large chunks of rubber on his filter screens on the returning mud.   This gentleman said that this rubber could have only come from the "annular valve" at the top of the BOP.  As I understand it the purpose of this valve is to seal the annular space between a restricting bushing and the drill pipe when they want to shut the well off from the riser.  He stated that someone inadvertently pulled about 15' of drill pipe through the closed valve.  This valve acts like a hydraulic collet.  

My in-laws who work offshore had been put under a "Don't Tell if Asked" policy.  To get close to the truth about about the events preceding the accident it would take a criminal indictment to get even half truths.   Have them brought before a Federal Grand Jury and have a jar of Petroleum Jelly on the table.  

If you get a chance checkout the National Geographic Film. Right at the end you can briefly see a very large oil flow from the well head with an unbent riser.  It worries me if they cut the drilling riser below the kink they could possibly have this flow again.
 

You're being too nice (letting them use that KY).

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO, BP

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" ..Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://vir

Did you see the one about using cheap casing?
ahttp://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64Q0SG20100527?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a49:g43:r2:c0.077612:b34433304:z0

To help with the stress, BP has laid on massage therapists in an alcove in the command center, with two massage chairs.
"When you're working people as hard as we are, you have to provide some stress relief," Kent Wells, BP senior vice president, told Reuters on Monday.

They want to turn off the cameras and not talk about real numbers, the supposed 700M they've already spent trying to fix it, because they don't want anyone racing to the real 50 Billion in cleanup and legal costs they could be approaching right now, today.

Today was the first time I heard some newscaster say BP could be looking at "10s of billions" in costs.  Well .. it's about time somebody (besides me) started doing the math.  If the leak has always been 20 KBOPD * 35 days * $ 32,500/BBL * 1.9, today they're looking at a $43 Billion (based on Valdez cost/BBL adjusted for inflation and BBLS spilled, but not for economic value of area affected).  Right on target to hit my projected 100 B if it goes until the relief well gets drilled, but they may be broke by then.  
 

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO, BP

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" ..Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://vir

"Top Kill" has been killed.

A friens of mine worked suraface wells for years in Alberta. He is astonished that the work continued without fixing the annular bag in the BOP as soon as it was damaged. He is further astonished that normal work continued after it was known that the BOP had a hydraulic leak and low hydraulic pressure.
Although the final trigger to the blowout may have been the controversial command to replace the mud with sea water, The known issues with the BOP took away their safety backups.
Many accidents are the result of more than one coincidental issues. Often three or more coincidental issues.
1> Had the annular bag been repaired on the BOP it had a good chance of benignly stopping the flow when the cementing crew first discovered  rising pressures. The driller apparently activated the annular device in time but it had been destroyed a month previously and not replaced.
2> Apparently it was known that the BOP was leaking hydraulic fluid, and operating pressure was low. Had that issue been addressed it is likely that the BOP would have operated in time to save the rig and possibly the lives.
3> The decision to proceed with the removal of the mud despite ambiguous pressure test results may have been recoverable in the absence at least one of the other factors.
I remember being in an arbitration hearing and hearing a PE describe his theory of an accident. After the workers brole the control block, it fell UP into the main contacts and initiated the fault.
Everyone was so aghast at his disregard for basic physics that the defense attorney did not even ask him to reconcile his theory with the law of gravity. His position prevailed.
I am sure that BP's lawyers will be able to suppress most of the facts on one pretext or another.
I wish I wasn't so cynical, but with corporate survival at stake and billions of dollars available for lawyers, I fear that the next casualties in this disaster will be logic, truth and justice.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

waross,
Totally agree, if only some one in authority would have asked the proverbial question "how come".

A very interesting read.  The thing that bothers me is this was a drill ship.  That means it was a ship under maritime regulations and on a ship is in charge if he is alive and that is the Captain.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704113504575264721101985024.html?mod=wsj_india_main

The total mud pumped was announced as 30,000 barrels.  

waross
Also agreed that science and law or lawyers don't go together. i had a friend who was sitting at a traffic light and was hit by a county dump truck. The attorney was using diagrams and physics to prove that the county truck hit the car because he didn't go on the light. About 30 seconds into his spiel my big boss who was on the jury called "BS" on him.  For this he thrown off the jury and fined for contempt of court.  After he was removed the judge allowed the lawyer to go and the county driver got off and my buddy was charged with impeding traffic.  My boss had a PhD in Engineering Physics and Chemical Engineering.    

waross (and, I know nothing about drill rigs)...

"He is astonished that the work continued without fixing the annular bag in the BOP as soon as it was damaged."

Would whoever was doing the work know the function of the annular bag and if it had failed, would he not require some kind of permission to continue without it?

In a similar fashion, would he know what might be the likely cause of the hydraulic leak? or the low hydraulic pressure?

"Although the final trigger to the blowout may have been the controversial command to replace the mud with sea water,"

Why would this be done? and with the pressures involved what would be the difference between using drilling mud and sea water.  Is the drilling mud a 'swelling' bentonite type of material?

"The driller apparently activated the annular device in time but it had been destroyed a month previously and not replaced."

I would assume that the driller did not know that the annular device was inoperable, else he wouldn't have tried to activate it.  Is this correct?

"I wish I wasn't so cynical, but with corporate survival at stake and billions of dollars available for lawyers, I fear that the next casualties in this disaster will be logic, truth and justice."

... my earlier comments...

Was BP actually looking after the work? or had they sub-contracted to others?  Do they have an involvement, other than owning the well?

Dik

"Although the final trigger to the blowout may have been the controversial command to replace the mud with sea water,"

As I'm sure you've found out by now, the "mud" is a complex chemical formulation of clay, varying brine content, gels, minerals, of varying ph and chemical compatability with the near surface environment, the geologic formation and even with the crude.  Properties of the mud can vary widely depending on if it is being circulated or if circulation has stopped.  If circulation is stopped, shear stresses may change and make it very difficult to restart, salt crystals can form, hydrates can form and flow can become blocked. It wouldn't be too surprizing to find out that salt crystals or hydrate formation was responsible for initial plugging, which may have caused some confusion about the pressure readings of the well tests.  Its also slick and dirty, so its usually removed before final cementing to get a good bonding surface for the cement setup. That's probably why it was being removed and replaced with seawater.

I would imagine the drill boss believed the BOP and all equipment was in working order.

The company rep always, always, always has the last word.  Did I mention "always".  This next article suggests that his last word came after a "skirmish" with TransOcean personnal, which to me would also indicate that there might have been considerable emotional involvement clouding that judgement rather than being the result of pure logic.  I'm sure you know I don't like to spectulate (joke), but stranger things have happened, right?

"Skirmish"
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64P5ZX20100526

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO, BP

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" ..Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://vir

Here is the 60 Minutes interview with Mike Williams from the DWH. It gives a little better time line and the reason for the loss of power, but mainly the loss of the annular valve.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/16/60minutes/main6490197.shtml?tag=cbsContent;cbsCarousel

The government keeps referring to the two relief wells being drilled when for several days there has been only one well being drilled. BP stated yesterday that the second drill ship had even move off station.
 

The flow capacity is just a little tiny bit more than
the maximum of what I calculated above according to this article,

80    bbls/m
3360    bbls/h
80640    bbls/d

http://www.rigzone.com/news/incident.asp?inc_id=1

 

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO, BP

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" ..Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://vir

For those who may have missed the link here is one of the live feeds from BP.  They getting ready to cut the drilling riser to shorten it prior to using the wire saw on same at the top of the BOP.

http://www.livestream.com/wkrg_oil_spill
 

Fingers Xed.
I'm sure they have.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO, BP

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" ..Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://vir

It looks like Poseidon is getting angry.  
 
Taken from aboard the Discover Enterprise sitting on top of the event horizon.

http://my.engineering.com/pg/file/unclesyd/read/292365/

http://my.engineering.com/pg/file/unclesyd/read/292363/

http://my.engineering.com/pg/file/unclesyd/read/292364/

They stated that the pucker factor is getting higher by the minute as no one knows the amount of gas they can expect when they start getting new riser working.

I hope I fixed the first link.  

Has anybody seen a copy of the flowrate calculations done by the US gov Flow Rate Group?

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO, BP

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" ..Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://vir

I've been watching the cut progress on the live feed.

It's clearly getting hard to maneuver the camera sub because of the flow from the cut.

As of now, it appears they've gotten what I think is a wire saw stuck in the kerf, possibly because of the claw pulling up on the bent-over portion of the riser pipe and closing the kerf, just like my Dad yelled at me for when I was 'helping' him saw lumber.

 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

{b]MikeHalloran[/b],

If your observation is correct, that was one of the main problems considered when they chose thee diamond wire saw.
There are other considerations to look at, like the presure jet is taking some of the contact pressure off the wire.  Another is that the drill pipe inside the drilling riser is vibrating. This would be almost like trying to cut a tube with free round solid rod inside rolling with the saw.

For all:

http://www.deepwaterbp.com/

Right now the live feed is showing plankton or something.

From 4AM EDT to a while ago, it looked like they had stopped the wire saw, and maybe backed it out of the kerf, and had something on the end of a shiny arm extending from the camera sub into the area of the wire saw's guard in line with the kerf.  I couldn't figure out if it was an impact wrench on a bolt, or a circular saw above the bolt head.  It didn't translate for all the time I watched it.

 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

DOUBLE WALL SEA ANCHOR>>  Forgive me if this has already been talked about, but I feel obligated to get this idea out for scrutiny. I watched on Discover channel, just a couple of weeks before this disaster, about how floating derricks of this type were stabilized from the ocean floor.  If I remember correctly they called them vacuum anchors.  Which were dropped into the ocean from the derrick, I assume imbedding themselves in the ocean floor like a lawn dart and then a vacuum was pulled, thereby using the advantage of ocean depths to push the anchors with mooring lines into the sea bed.

I am wondering if a double wall vacuum sea anchor could be built.  Basically a large diameter pipe with a smaller pipe inside which the diameter of the inner cylinder would be large enough to clear the largest well casing and BOP.  The top of the pipe would be sealed with a plate.  Above the center pipe chamber would be located a "working" BOP would be installed in the open position.  A "vacuum" would be pulled on the outer ring of surface area between the inside of the largest cylinder and outside of the inner cylinder. Calculations assuming a certain pressure on the inner area could be counter acted with the ocean pressue on the outer area.  This area would be sized to counteract the pressure in the well to hold this device in place after the BOP valve is shut.  Also some addition friction could be utilized from the soil surrounding the imbedded cylinder.  

 

Her is the Wach's diamond Wire saw being used. One can not wee it clear enough it appears to have been slightly modified from the brochure.

http://www.wachsco.com/subsea/pdffiles/dws.pdf


TGordon15,
This ship has no anchors as it has a dynamic positioning system.  I don't know to what sea state will hold  it's position, but it is pretty high.
Checkout the last two picture links in my 1 June 10 21:27 post, it is holding station at this time.

 

Holding position and working wave height are usually entirely different criteria.  Even though there is no wave action at the bottom, you still might have to recover or deploy tools from a pitching deck and through the surface water waves, so they can only work up to a wave height and wind velocity that would be significantly smaller than what holding position limits would allow...unless of course they increased their risk tolerance a corresponding amount.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO, BP

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" ..Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://vir

Tere is also some type of compensation mechanism on the rig floor for wave height.
 

It seems like top kill start was delayed.  Might it have been because of those waves in your pictures?  I've been out there in a 180 ft workboat in similar conditions and it ain't no fun putting our back up against the netting and locking our feet against the wall trying to get some sleep.. well actually it is for the first couple of days ... then Ernest Borgnine sticks his head up the hatch and &*(^&*^%(*

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO, BP

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" ..Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://vir

[Just a clarification, I think TGordon15 is basically talking about a new adequately high pressure/port rated shut-off valve mounted on a plate on the top middle of the inner vessel of the potentially positive large steel capping contraption (not necessarily a "new BOP"), that would be in the "open" position tominimize upward pressure thrust when the double-walled cap is slid down over but not necessarily at all touching the existing riser/BOP, then to be closed for positive shut-off of everything after the vacuum is drawn on the outer annulus, driving the whole thing very strongly into the seabed.  And of course the vacuum would have to be maintained on the much larger area outer annulus, and everything designed for adequate, long-term buckling resistance once the vacuum drawn.  Of course this is all dependednt on thembeing able to successfully cut off the damaged riser above the BOP!]    

I've owned many British sportscars over the decades and there used to be an expression, "Why do Brits like warm beer?" and the reply was that, "British Leland made refrigerators."... maybe they do BOP's, too...

Dik

A question, unclesyd;
Are the pictures you posted an example of the type of weather that is common in the hurricane season, or are they current, onsite pictures. Thanks.
Yours
Bill

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

These were taken when a squall line was passing through the area just after the incident.  The rough seas can last for about one hour then it can become quite calm.  The water spouts are quite common during the spring, summer, and fall and it's not uncommon to see multiples.  The most I've seen at one time was 13 on three different squall lines during a time when a cold front was passing through.  The sea state can be like this for several days when a slow moving cold front comes through.
It is not uncommon to get 10 ft waves when low pressure systems pass through and we get a couple of days of steady winds from one direction.
They are probably starting to get some heavy seas as there is a low pressure area over around Houston that can build some nice waves from the Southwest.
aBad for us as it driven the oil towards us.     

Just got word that the top hat is sitting on top of the BOP riser and they have N2 purge on it and are going to start reducing N2 pressure very shortly.

The bi worry is the amount of gas volume that they will see at the surface.

rconner,
the vacuumanchors used work very well, when pulling force is aplied to them, somewhat in a horizontal plane (like an anchor supposed to do).
the proposed construction would require a very long pipe (since the force would be in the vertical plane).probably sucking the pipe down, wouldn't be possible (if the pipe get stucked, it will collapse under the water pressure)

CH5OH,

I don't think I have done a very good job of explaining myself.  Hopefully my drawing will help explain a little.  I appreciate your feedback.

• http://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=a1e4a530-83a7-4718-90c5-d8

That's what I thought you meant.
A couple of negative suggestions;
The area of the negative pressure section should be about 10 times or more the area of the well pressure section to avoid being lifted by well pressure should hydrates plug the discharge or the pressure of expanding gas bubbles raise the dynamic pressure in the well section.
The outer shell must be able to withstand over 2000 psi, the well section may have to withstand 20,000 psi. Then add safety factors. Ops, forgot, this is bp, no safety factors needed.
Until a day or so ago, the riser with the drill pipe inside was in the way.
but if they don't get the top hat working your suggestion may be the next solution.
With a pressure difference of about 15,000 psi more or less between the well section and the vacuum section, any back pressure may just blow the mud in the well section down under the divider and into the vacuum section.
15,000 psi is over two million pounds per square foot. That will move a lot of sea bed mud.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

Just heard that they have bringing two ships closer and are going to do some re piping to get a better recovery rate.
I believe that 1000 bbls a day is all they can handle safely so it call for a regroup.  They did report a higher number for a twelve hour peroid but there were concerns.


Here is a link that carries all twelve feeds and will work with Windows Media Player.
I believe that some of links that are down belong to ships that are moving.

http://www.sanaracreations.fi/rov-feeds/index.html

Without meaning any undeserved disrespect, BP sure keeps coming up with fixes that don't actually work, or at least don't work as well when executed as they sound when proposed.  

A reasonable observer might suspect that perhaps they don't really know what they're doing, and are all just basically, er, passing gas.

Most recently, they've spent some days just getting hold of a relatively stable flange, and not quite attaching a pipe to it.

The next, 'sure fire' step scares me a bit.  Drilling into the ground under the gulf and piercing a pipe full of high pressure flammables, and sealing a joint that they can't see, or access externally?  Yeah, I know they say they've done it before.  They said they had done the other stuff before, too.
 

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

Tgordon15, Ok I now understand the proposed installation,
as warros pointed out, the thickness of required plating and sealing between pressure and vacuum part might be not feasable.
for sealing of the leak three difficulties to overcome:
1.the depth
2.the pressure of the well
3.the energy being present in the oil flow, between well and reservoir (chock wave)

nr1 and nr2, deep sea exploitation has given human kind a certain level of expertise.
nr3 would be the most difficult one to overcome and in normal circumstances, the shut of device would be in place before a flow is present.However, current events show this device needs to be redesigned as it seems to be the only disaster recovery plan being used in deep sea exploitation.from an economical point of vieuw not stopping the flow, but bring it to the surface (load it into tankers,while flairing of the gas)might be the best choice to deal with nr3 and with the numurous damage claims.
so far BP has managed,I believe, to separate the debris from the well...
human kind in all his glory, with its intelligence as only weapon to endeveour its stupidity.would it be the right time to invest monney in tunafish?

Please take this as more of a question than a suggestion.
I have been wondering about the construction of the BOP. Is there no place that a hydraulic line to a set of shears is accessible?
It does not seem that it would be that difficult to squeeze off a hydraulic line to prevent back flow and then then pierce it and introduce enough hydraulic oil so that the shear can compete its stroke and close the well as it would have had not the available pressure been depleted when the cement crew unknowingly tried to close the damaged annular device.
Are BOPs constructed so that the hydraulic lines to the shears are inaccessible?

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

The bottom kill by relief well is almost a true and tried solution to a blow out. the will use the highest weight mud available some where near 18 lbs/gal vs the oil at about 8.5 lbs/gal.  On top of this they will add a cement plug of sufficient weight to hold the whole thing in place.  It might take several attempts to hit the well bore, it has taken up to seven.  Probably the biggest worry is that the lower casing has been compromise and the cement liner has also been compromised.  After all this they will take the BOP off and plug the casing in the upper section or they could cement the all the way to bottom plug.

Even though they exerted some very high pressure during the top kill event they are scared that they will compromise the casing and thus the well bore.  In such and event they could have though the floor surrounding the well.  This would be very very bad.  One other point if the cement liner in the upper section has been compromised increase the pressure at the top could possibly jack up the casing and BOP all in one piece.

We now have oil on the beaches at Pensacola and Navarre.  The beaches are closing.   

The linked drawing provided is basically what I understood.  While this would no doubt be quite an Engineering and fabrication undertaking, If the principle were to work, this very large and no doubt in practice heavy type cap could have an advantage of maybe intercepting not only that oil we all see on the clips coming out of the cut-off riser BOP, but maybe also some that might be seeping inside the larger 36"? casing on the seabed, or maybe even some distance outside same through the soil (by the inner containment vessel, recovery piping extending from the top of the shut-off valve, or even outer vaccum drawing or internal pressure relieving annulus/vacuum piping).  I believe there are folks, however, who could quite readily fabricate steel tubes and reinforcements many meters/feet in diameter with even many inches thick walls, and welded together as high as necessary to clear.   

 

Talking to a fishing buddy who also happens to be an attorney and while we were talking about the coming lawsuits I mentioned the fact that Halliburton is owned by G.E. He was caught off guard.  He stated that he didn't know that fact and he could see why some of the biggest law firms around are getting in on the litigation.  
He is criminal lawyer and is not in any of the groups getting in the different aspects of the litigation.

As you probably know G.E. and BP deep pockets are both very tight in Washington circles from the bottom to the top.   

As Justin Wilson would have said,

"Dun you wuri nun bout dat.  Tamara de be nuffta tar'n'feder dem aaaaallllll ova dem sels."

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO, BP

**********************
"Being GREEN isn't easy" ..Kermit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://vir

And you thought that  a  vortex was only required for commodes to function properly.  This is one of several types of apparatus being evaluated by people of all dimensions.

Voraxial Oil Separator

Http://www.evtn.com/home1.html

I went over to the beach to see this material demonstrated.  it works as described and is relatively inexpensive.  It is a Urethane fabric and has the ability to host some super microbes that start immediately start to work on the oil.

X-Tech Fabric

http://www.spillcontainment.com/products/stormwater/x-tex/AM3.

Saw an interesting conversation that illuminated the problem of getting anything accomplished.  There are 35 government  agencies involved that have to give their approval before anything is presented to BP for a yea or nay.

They had one show and tell where a gentleman was using very dry straw, like was used in the Santa Barbara Spill,  He asked the CG about using it and the reply send back was that it will soak up oil but you end up with a mess of oily straw, but no oil on the water.  The person who was demonstrating it asked about piling it up and burning it.  The answer to the question  Oh No that will cause  pollution.

 

Ship it to the tar sands and give it to an upgrader. It may work as feed stock for a coker. Use it for boiler fuel. If there was any will there would be a way.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

There are hundreds of technologies that can be used to separate or adsorb oil from water quite effectively, nearlay all of which have been proven at one scale or another.  The problem is accomplishing any one of them at the scale required to solve this mess.  In the meantime, Mother Nature is left to her few inefficient and time consuming disbursement and breakdown methods.  Some surgical red tape removal is needed as well as several thousand kicks to a few hundred butts.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

waross...

We don't want the tarsands (ecological mess), let alone the new stuff... I was thinking it would be better for Canada to build a large conveyor and send the tarsands south for processing <G>.

Sounds like a fun project, but actually I think there's enough there right now.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

Oil sands is controversial isn't it, dik
Failing that, a straw/oil mix should work as fuel for any number of American generating plants.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

In case any had not seen it, per a NYT article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/us/08dam.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss and http://www.wkrg.com/gulf_oil_spill/article/preparations-underway-to-close-weeks-bay/893582/Jun-05-2010_9-39-pm/ etc. some good ol' boys have apparently sort of bypassed bureaucracy and taken matters into their own hands to protect "1,275 miles of bay and river coastline  (that unlike what was apparently tried unsuccessfully for Mobile Bay also employs a good bit of solid steel – if they are able to ahead of the oil, one would think that they may be successful, at least until hurricane season, with moving a good bit of the oil at least a little further down the line).      

It's really too bad that folk like them are an endangered species.  They know that sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands.

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - Robert Hunter
 

Quote:

The town bought the boom right away, before an increase in demand nearly quadrupled the price.

  Looks like profiteers arn't endangered spicies.  I hope they have the "cages" ready for those birds.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

Halliburton is NOT owned by GE.  

I cannot guess where this one came from, but it should be understood in no uncertain terms that Hallburton is not in any way owned by GE.  

That being said, I would not be surprised if some portion of GE's employees' 401(k) program owns some tiny number of Halliburton shares, but that is not what was being implied by unclesyd.  

Halliburton is traded on the stock market as an independent company (stock symbol HAL) and is not in any way whatsoever a division, subsidiary or department of GE.  Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that there aren't even any significant partnerships between the two companies.  

Anyone have any info to refute?  

Engineering is not the science behind building.  It is the science behind not building.   

Biginch, threatening to throw people in prison for selling the boom for the going rate only results in one thing -- massive shortages.  

You can live in fantasy land where government agents come along like Barney Fife, trying to prevent the free market from working, but the rest of us live here in reality.  And that reality is this:

     There is a limited amount of boom.  
     There are multiple groups bidding on that boom.  
     The groups who want it will bid against each other to purchase the limited amount of boom in existence.  

Because of the free market, we now have a situation where every single manufacturing facility in the country where boom can possibly be made will be making the boom 24/7.  Why would that be?  BECAUSE THEY GET A PREMIUM FOR BUSTING THEIR TAILS.  

Here is the alternative offered by your draconian, totalitarian, top-down, central-planner lock-em-up-because-we-don't-like-them-making-a-nickel policy:
1) Prices are kept at the normal level
2) Boom manufacturers have no incentive to operate at full capacity.
3) Massive boom shortages ensue.
4) More dead coastline.  

Your policy is classic stage-one thinking.  You don't like anyone making money, so you implement policies which force people to suffer because you have no idea what the ramifications of your own policies are.  

Your smug, do-gooding policy against "profiteering" coats more coastline in oil.  Thank you.  Your efforts have been a great help.  

Engineering is not the science behind building.  It is the science behind not building.   

Profiteering may be the difference between a very good profit and ample incentive to produce on the one hand and taking unfair advantage of the misfortune of others to gouge obscene profits on the other hand.
The free market system works fairly well but one of the places it sometimes fails is the response to disasters such as hurricanes and massive oil spills. Governments do at times intervene.
Seems like a massive over-reaction to an offhand comment by BigInch.
 

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

Thanks Waross.  It wasn't really an offhand comment though.  I thought about the situation and became quite outraged.  If I were to make an offhand comment, it would be that I think I understand what a free market is much better than EngrTX. I learned what a free market meant, honestly trading marbles in second grade; not on Wall Street.

The plain facts are that this situation was not created by a free market and I think 4X $ is prima facie evidence that there's some profiteering going on.  Profiteering is illegal, period.  Here's the facts about a free market.  Its easy to understand.  If I made a super huge order, I'd get a super huge price discount.  That's what happens in a free market.  Sorry EngrTx, but that's the way I see it. Seems simple to me.  Maybe something's blinded you.  What happened, you have too much of BP stock in your retirement portfolio?     

I really can't believe that there are people thinking like this, but then I live in a fantasy world.  A place where if the GOM goes black, the sky falls in and the tsunami arrives, I don't think, "Hey what a "f*(&(*~@#  fantastical opportunity" to make some a$$$$$$$". And I don't mind people making honest money.  "Short BP" is my thread.  Heck.. I even told you how to do it.  Look at the date.  But when it comes to profeteer's Gold or the Environment... Humm.  That's a no-brainer.  If there's anybody that thinks otherwise about this, I'd suggest you screw it on tighter before you go walking around, or pretty soon you're not going to have anywhere you'll want to go walking around.  

As far as the solution to this boom thing, IF I was the govenor, I'd have the state police over there locking down that place straight away and I wouldn't hesitate a NY second declaring martial law and throwing the owners in jail immediately.  MY emergency management team and EngrTx would be staffing it 25/8 with the National Guard to make sure that all the booms necessary were produced and sold on BPs credit at a reasonable price and the previous owner didn't get a **UK** £ for it.  IMO, THIS "spill" is nothing short of a national emergency and EngrTX and a whole lot of other people need to start thinking like it is and declaring one, instead of lecturing me what a free market is all about while they let profiteering anos rip off the American people and what's left of the environment. Is that your idea of a free market?  But I'm living in fantasy world, so what do I know?  But I think I do know that I prefer fantasy to the, "Anything goes, if you can make a buck", of your world."  That's probably how all this mess got started to begin with. Geez!
 

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

I'm thinking, many businesses are satisfied with a 15% profit. Many never see a 15% profit. That's the free market.
Now $850 net plus 15% profit = $1000. (That's the way my old sales manager taught me to calculate profit.)
Now sell that for $4000. That's $3150 profit on a $850 item. But it is $3015/$150 = 21 times a normal profit.
And yes I've been there and had the opportunity to gouge during the repairs after hurricane Mitch. I decided to keep the same rates as I had been charging before the hurricane, the rates that had been determined in a free market, not when someone was in distress.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

Not only are manufacturers raising the price of the 8' boom in violation of Florida laws on price gouging it is the new Copper. Florida has some very strict price gouging laws. I don't know what the limits are but the pantiles get tough very quick. Ask some of the gas stations after the last Hurricanes.             

It got real interesting today when a 500 gal Al Tote Bin washed up on the beach at Panama City Beach, Florida and no one in the forty or are so emergency people knew what it was. It had a BP sticker attached so it is being treated as a hazardous waste. It very well could be sanitary waste.

There was another good one today at Gulf Shores Alabama where tons of oil washed upon the white sands, ugly and sad. There were several people in hazmat suits. the heat index was 106°F. One of the reporters ask the guy in charge whio was dressed in a white suit and straw hat what was going on. He said they were sampling this material to see if it was oil and also determine where it came from.

The also tried one of the brand new $87,00 beach cleaners to remove the oil and it clogged up in about 5 minutes. The official comment was that the oil was too sticky.  

looks like this thread is heading in a direction I didn't want it to go.while some ideas were raised, most of repplies going in the direction of the impact of the pollution, which is a side effect of the leak.
there used to be some time in shipping industry were a loyds open form was used to deal with a ship in distress.It required the captain of the ship to sign the open form.Advantage of such a system was that a third party was taking over, with an unlimited budget.This way they could focus on the problem at hand without distress or loss of profit contraints.As distress/pressure limits the ability of humans to think clear, emergency systems should not be more complicated than counting to 3 (like an emergency stop button)
clearly BP suffers from stress from facing bancrupty
clearly the US goverment suffers stress from facing a popularity blow
I heard on this site of the world they even got some hollywood involvement(cameron, costner)???
Question remains how to seal off that damn leak??
Without the restriction of having to think under stress,
any bright ideas?
 

CH5OH,
For all practical purposes the relief welds are the best and possibly the only hope. I asked someone that is very close to the drilling of one of the RW wells, in fact right on top of it, to give me a confidence estimate on the possibility of success, the best answer for the conditions as known now is 80+ %. This number will move as they approach the actual intercept zone.  As it has been put to me there are more things that can go wrong that ones that can go right during such an operation. I think the max number of RWs tried is 7.  The only problem is that if these two fail it is 60-90 days before another try.
The biggest problem working around the BOP is that the condition of casing and cement liner below isn't known with any degree of confidence.  Too much information is being held too close to vest by BP and select few to allow any credible outside input.

They are now going to add some pressure sensors on the BOP to help with the flow measurement.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/13/gulf.oil.disaster/

In my opinion the government doesn't have on expert in it's
employment to be inspector #9 on anything that goes on.  They totally have to rely on what BP tells them. They just named a coast guard officer, no experience in the oil industry or spill clean up, to act as a sieve for ideas about the spill.   

The oil booms mentioned above are INHO are useless as the proverbial f__y in the whirlwind.  Work very well in calm waters, and are made use less by any wave action at 1/2 their diameter.  Any current negates any effect they might have.  They tried some in Pensacola and Perido Passes where the current can get to 7 knots and they went down like a submarine on  a crash dive. The oil goes right over the top. A couple of areas are here they are using brages as breakwater and booms inshore.

At present it doesn't look good for this area.  i caught my first red snapper in the GOM in 1939 and it looks like I may not live long enough to catch another one.

 

Remember the freeze of '81, was it?  Below 32 for a solid week.  Fishing took 5 years to "recover" from that one, if you could call it recover.  Might never from this.

CH05,  I think all the tricks are used up.  That's the problem, isn't it, and none of the tricks were ever proven for deep water, except on the computer screen.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

as I am not used to use abreviations to a great extend, I had to look up on wikki what a BOP was.What struck me on the two explained designs (ram design with shears and annular design): while the first one is only an emergency device, which can cut the dril bit if needed, the second seems to be an emergency device as well as an operating device (to keep the pressure below).something you use during normal operation doesn't keep the same value when needed in emergency operation (it wears down)and should therefore have a back up.then of coarse the design isn't a closing on failure.all factors leading to a disaster.
 

biginch, to land people on the moon, never been done before, it only required comittment (or a holliwood trick?lol)

Another difference. There is a drill stem or pipe through the center of the hole. The annular seal seals around the drill pipe. Some may also seal the hole when there is not a drill pipe in the hole.
Then there are opposed gate-valve type valves that have cut-outs to seal around the pipe.
BUT, these close the riser or casing but leave the drill stem open. I think that this drill stem is 6 inches or so in diameter.
The drill stem has to be sealed on the rig.
The shears are a solution last resort. Once the drill pipe has been sheared and possibly several miles of pipe dropped into a well casing with pressure and kicking issues, using the shears may be very expensive to recover from.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

CH5OH There is a great difference in risk-safety-benefit  levels.  Yes the lunar missions were not proven, but everyone understood the risks, 3 very willing volunteers killed, a fireball or lost in space scenario and .. of course, loss of face to the Russians.  The loss of face risk probably a worse consequence than the others.  What was the risk here? Was the risk to safety relationship understood?  Was the massive environmental damage possibility ever contemplated?  Was the worse case evaluation even made.

I have a feeling that, if the probability of success for this project was calculated at all, the reliability of the BOP was calculated 20 years ago for < 100m water depth, entered by a clerk that didn't know what it meant, grabbed from a database by some other program without any understanding of the significance of life or death, used in a calculation procedure that never really considered the probability of failure, except as the mathamatical value of 1-P(success), printed out to some financial project evaluation sheet, where again nobody knew what that number meant other than in financial terms ranking projects by potential profit, and even if the probability of success was only 90% as limited by a BOP or other equipment failure, the last program only evaluated that (unacceptable) 90% against the 100 Billion dollar profit and found it to be an acceptable financial risk-to-profit-potential, and that was that.  In short, somebody selected the project without ever having  crossed their mind of the possibility that it could turn the GOM into 10 shades of black.  I think it was selected based only on 2 possible outcomes, 90% x 100 Million lost vs. 10% x 100 Billion gained, or -$90,000,000 vs +$10,000,000,000.  If you had an MBA which one would you take?  

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

Big Inch- this is what is worrying me.  For decades drilling engineers like me have put all our faith in the BOP as the ultimate well control solution.  Where BOPs did fail we could understand it- on the Ekofisk blowout part of the BOP was upside down (!!) and on the Ocean Odyessey the BOP failed after very, very extended stripping operations.  

In terms of subsea stacks we thought the dual redundancy of the yellow pod and the blue pod, coupled with emergency BOP control systems meant the BOP would always work (in fact the main concern recently has been a subsea BOP working when it wasn't supposed to- unplanned BOP and LMRP disconnects).

So why didn't the Deepwater Horizon's BOP function? (or not function fully)?  Two annulars, four pipe rams (ie two pipe rams, probably variables, a blind/ shear ram and probably a blind ram) and none managed to shut the well in...  That, for me is one of the biggest questions to be answered.

DrillerNic,
That question is bothering a lot of people other than your self.
Some of the things that are known.

According to testimony the annular seal had been compromised earlier when the DP had been inadvertently moved while the seal was energized.  Chunks of rubber were detected on the mud screens earlier.  This may have positioned a DP joint in the top shear ram which does have the force needed to shear the joint.  

The BOP hydraulics were is in disrepair as there was at least one known leak on the primary hydraulic system.  The question has been asked was they secondary hydraulic system fully pressurized?

There was no testing done prior to installation other than a partial pressure test with a dummy ram.

The question arises was there is a piece of casing along with the DP in the bottom shear ram path.

Why couldn't they apply hydraulic pressure on the BOP early on?  They showed a hydraulic intensifier on the bottom for several days. Now I think they are concerned that they will shut in the well and over pressure the casing, a very bad problem if it is compromised in some way.

From what I can ascertain they are several schools of thought on exactly what is holding the drill pipe in the BOP.

Here is a question I've asked and as yet to receive an answer is how much they will be able to choke the flow if they have to cut loose for a storm. At the present they will have to open everything up on the BOP to keep the pressure down at the BOP.  Hopefully they will get their new hardware installed prior to any storm which is supposed to have better handle storm conditions.   

biginch, the reference to the lunar project was a repply to:all tricks are used up, which sounded a bit like I can't do it.but i guess you're right, while changing the level of comittment changes what you can and can't do, it does come down to a cost/risk benefit analyse.Since the quantity of of red snappers filing a law suit will be rather small, the environmental dammage/commitment to seal off the leak also will be a cost/benefit calculation.It looks like BP has been granted the exploitation rights only for the well and the f.ck up rights for the whole GOM.
 

Redfish don't vote either, except through the Gulf Coast Conservation Association members; a pretty small representation.  Great fish though.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

I am an Aerospace Engineer.  I have an idea to regain control of the well in the Gulf but I am out of my element and can't say for sure if it is even feasible.  Experts, please take a look at the idea (linked below) and tear it apart.  I need honest feedback.  Thank you.

www.killthewell.com

After you achive docking, what will you do about the hydrates?  It looks like a higher-tech version of the concrete tophat, which failed due to hydrate plugging.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

Aside from the above post another major problem is being able support the apparatus on the bottom.  The sea floor at the well site is a very thick layer silt sitting on a very thick layer of mud. When this well was started probably the first 300-500 feet of large casing was just pushed into the sea floor, there was not drilling.
Early on you probably heard of them putting mud mats on the bottom to support some equipment or tools and the only problem these mats don't support very much.

Bp is also extremely worried about disturbing the casing in any way after the top kill attempt due concerns about  integrity of the casing.

I played around with the idea of using corrugated silo sections or drainage pipe to make s standpipe to the surface. My contraption would be allowed just sink into the mud to seek it's own level. Talked myself out of this due to the horrendous currents at times in this area and the little problem of gas separation.

the basic idea of nathanian isn't to bad but its a complex design.lots of things can go wrong...
the hydrates which formed with the tophad can be avoided by not using a tophad, which basically collected the hydrates in the much smaller top connection.to my humble opinion you need to:
1.provide anchorage onto the BOP:some big silo which slides over the BOP, to be filled with concrete
2.provide a diverging (as opposit to tophad)blow of line with shut of gate valves on top of BOP(total area in excess of area leaking pipe),valve wheels to be compatible with ROV hydraulic arm.
3.pour concrete in the silo,to anchor the blow of line to the BOP
4.close the valves one by one, slowly reducing the flow to 0
5.engage a fleet of barges with brush type conveyor belts to collect the oil at sea (easier to collect at sea than scrape it of the beaches)
6.have a beer and settle the dammage claims

Are there any components that compress too much under 2200 psi water pressure causing contact surfaces to be loose when arriving at 5000 ft depth?  Are there any tubes that will collapse under 2200 psi external pressure.  What's the construction schedule look like.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

biginch I dont understand your questions

Sorry,
FAQs for the BOP docker.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

BigInch,  

BP seems to have gotten a handle on venting and controlling the formation of hydrates, (see their latest cap), so I've left those transferable details to them.

While I was putting my solution together I knew there were a lot of things I didn't know so I limited myself to using only those technologies or skills that BP has already demonstrated.  We know they can build and handle big structures, we know they can position large structures with precision, we know they can handle hydrates, and we know they can pump cement.  Put it all together (with a few minor twists) and you've got a solution that BP should already know how to execute.

I'm considering most details (such as the type of rubber to use in the seal) to be design details, not design problems.  If the general concept is deemed feasible then someone else (more qualified than me) at BP can add fidelity to the design.

I'm just looking for show-stoppers in the core concept: Use a modified open-top silo as cement form to join a new LMRP to the BOP stack.

Thank you (and unclesyd and CH5OH) for your input.

  

The latest number just out on CNN is "They are not saying it could have been leaking 60,000 BOPD every day."  Finally hit my number!

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

One thing I forgot to mention is that they are currently limited by the flare capacity at the current 15,000 bbl flow rate.
The latest iteration is to to use an Evergreen Burner to flare both oil and gas instead of moving the oil to shore.

https://www.emiinc.com/services/testing/surface_testing/evergreen_burner.aspx

i read in the newspaper today holliwood star costner sold 32 centrifugal separators to "the project"
lol, the problem isn't to separate the oil from the water it's the logistics of loading the oil at sea and unloading the oil onshore
the TOP KILL "project name" is suggesting the flow at a certain point is getting killed.Being more of a TOP RESURECTION, it explains the need for flaring/discharging on the surface....
 

Tthe reason for flaring the gas is that there is no other way to get rid of it.  Many have suggested that that it be converted to LNG and the only problem with that is there isn't any available floating LNG facilities drifting around.
The noise and fumes form the existing flare are very big problems with workers on the rigs, fire suits, ear plugs, and respirators.
If the Evergreen Flare System makes anywhere near the noise that old incinerator ship that showed up in the Gulf several times it's going to be tough all around the well site.  

Talked with some people last night and two of the big DW rigs have picked up and headed to Africa and Brazil. This person just came off the Enterprise last Thursday and has been called back for this Friday, said he felt like an Alaskan crab fisherman.

 

unclesyd, you are missing my point:
if the leak is sealed off, there is no need for a pipe to the surface, there is no need for tankers, there is no need for gas/oil separation, there is no need for a flare of any kind.There is no need to deal with hydrates.When the rig sunk, the connection between the well and the rig failed on the weakest link: the riser buckled in three places,first on the top,last above the BOP.If the BOP was designed to withheld the pressure of the well,then it is still capable of providing enough foundation for a new shut off valve to be mounted on top.The fear BP is expressing :the below structure might be damaged is more the fear of getting linked with taking a wrong dessision.wrong dessisions have been made which caused this disaster.Humans are granted intelligence, evolved from taking some good dessisions in the past:
running away from the big animals so you don't die and get eaten.killing  small animals to eat so you don't die.Some died from taking the wrong dessision.All those who didn't make a desission died either way from not getting served dinner or getting served as a dinner.Time is defining the X factor in the simple equation:
dammage=X times Valdez

I think its more like brain cancer.  Higher probability of doing more damage by operating.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

The big worry is the very high probability that there is a leak in a section of the casing that could cause all manner of grief in the formation if pressure is increased in the upper section of the well bore. If they fracture the formation there is very good possibility they could open the reservoir to the sea bed by the resulting fissure. This possibility is exacerbated by the apparent loss of a rupture disk in the casing.  Also there is one section of casing string that has a burst pressure lower than the shut-in pressure that would develop if the BOP is closed off.

The BOP can handle the shut-in pressures OK but the casing cannot.                       

      

I did read somewhere that the selection of pipe was critized as probably not the best for the job at hand. One of those links up there.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

unclesyd makes a valid point (as usual).
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/06/evidence-points-to-destruction-beneath.html

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - Robert Hunter
 

appologies for drawing to fast a conclusion,probably a combination of lack of knowledge towards well engineering and spending working hours, amongst other things, with coverting plan 11 seals towards plan 53 in order to get the ppm leakage rates down....watching the leak rate on the video live streams and the clock ticking the time away...
so 11 people died,the drill rig went to deepwater,the BOP with triple shut off devices still partly intact but not usable, a damaged casing.So for the intercepting well to work, it needs to intercept below the fracture and above the well? 15000 ft of drilling to hit a 10 inch target is that feasable?
Hopefully 2012 isn't the year BP triggers the last attempt...

At present they are working to make a hard connection to the BOP to be able to get the 90% capture rate being battered about. They will still have to have some leakage to control the pressures. It would be very desirable to  allow this oil to reach the surface in mass but there is still the problem with the natural gas being evolved.  
The people that are going to do the drill driving have the greatest confidence in their ability to do the job. It may take two tries to center up on the casing so they can mill a hole in it to inject the mud. There has be some question by some of proper mud weight to use. the avery complicated question due to all the possible scenarios toward the surface.  18 lb/gal would be no problem and anything heavier has to have very special conditions.  According to my information the RW people have various and sundry additives to help with the kill attempt.  

I think congress ought to look in the mirror and ask where were the congressional and cabinet oversight committees prior to this event.  

Congress is upset with Tony but they no idea how upset the people along the coast are upset with them.

I think the fact and one of the biggest problems, is that the US doesn't have one solitary person in a position who knows a damn thing about the mechanics of drilling an oil or gas well. We have no flag man.   

My understanding of a relief well kill is to use a dynamic kill- pump seawater at high enough rate that the friction pressure losses up the blowing well overcome the bottom hole pressure, then with a dynamic kill, pump kill weight mud to get a static kill.  However, I've never done a well kill (never really had to deal with a well control incident, thank god), so I'm just going by what I remembr from my last IWCF course.

Intersecting the target well won't really be a problem- there's an awful lot of metal in all the casing of the target well for a well finder tool to look for- and intersection wells are becoming more and more common in CBM wells in North America, so I guess the DD on the relief wells will have had expereince of drilling intersection wells.  I've drilled a intersection CBM well in the UK- we got it on the third try despite having a cheap & cheerful (and not very good) directional company, and having milled out too much casing on the target well by accident, making the well finder tool a littel inaccurate.  

only after the last fish is consumed, it becomes clear monney can't be consumed.
I suppose GOM is considered to be a fuel tank with a high level of water content, while BP is struggling to get the leak fixed.I guess its part of American culture to first determine what´s right and what´s wrong, then determine how much it is wrong.According local news:
Valdez equivalent/every 4 days, 20 000 000 000 dollar total dammage.

See thread "Short BP" for Valdez monetary damage figures.
Quick reference:
Total apx $8,500,000,000 Billion
$32,500.00 dollars/BBL spilled.

"We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."  Tony Hayward CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.liv

Thankfully the well has now been plugged but how frightening it is how little we have learned in this industry. There's a price to pay for the 'cheaper 'n' deeper' ethos that has been adopted. Now the finger pointing can begin in earnest and I think the MMS is going to come into the firing line, as are the majors who have outsourced all their engineering expertise, for which Hayward's predecessor Lord Brown was responsible for at BP. Not to mention TransOcean who have kept below the parapet, especially regarding their rig annular BOP failures on the UKCS which resulted in the HSE turfing out two of their rigs several years back. The following article would point to some domestic housekeeping being a priority.
Click on the link to watch the video clip & then read the article

http://www.wimp.com/oilspills/

Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post · Saturday, Jun. 26, 2010. Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality.

The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. "Our system can handle 400 cubic meters per hour," Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.
To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn't capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana's marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks.

The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company's expense. "If there's a country that's experienced with building dikes and managing water, it's the Netherlands," says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.

In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with "Thanks but no thanks," remarked Visser, despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer --the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment --unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts.

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that." In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls "crazy."

The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.

A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. "Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands," he says, perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focussed on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance.

Then again, perhaps he should not be all that perplexed at the American tolerance for turning an accident into a catastrophe. When the Exxon Valdez oil tanker accident occurred off the coast of Alaska in 1989, a Dutch team with clean-up equipment flew in to Anchorage airport to offer their help. To their amazement, they were rebuffed and told to go home with their equipment. The Exxon Valdez became the biggest oil spill disaster in U.S. history--until the BP Gulf spill.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers.