fixing the gulf oil leak

[johnfoss]

Thank you for posting those informative articles. In the first one, where it says BP doesn't want to stop the leak, it's kind of irrelevant. That is, in terms of if they could suck up all the escaping crude, they would and everyone would be a lot happier about the situation. Obviously they can't. The environmental disaster continues to grow day by day, and they apparently aren't collecting much of the oil.

Or maybe they are, and this could be part of the discrepancies with the estimates of spill speed. In any case, the stuff is getting away. If they were able to stop it from getting away, this would be a big improvement so that's not the problem.

Would blowing up the well head stop the highly pressurized crude from finding its way into the Gulf? I don't get that impression at all. If it was believed this would work, I'm sure someone would be telling them to do it by now.

The second article you referenced was also very informative, but a little old (April 28). I'd like to hear what that author has to say on the subject more recently.

"My" Billionaires would rather see me dead? So little you know about billionaires. The billionaires want the same for all of us. They want us to keep buying gasoline. But that doesn't really matter. They don't need to create this situation; it already exists. It's like living in New York, where your daily commute may force you to cross one of the major bridges managed by the Port Authority. The toll you pay goes to subsidize the subways, which you can't use to get to work because they're in the wrong place. You have to drive, and you have to use the bridge. They've got you.

As long as oil remains the cheapest form of energy it's going to be the most popular. You complained about the price going up in 2008, but if you're against those guys you should applaud it. That is what it will take to put momentum into the shift to other forms of energy. Long as gas prices stay low, people are going to keep driving their fat SUVs.

[BillyTheMountain]

Originally Posted by DSchmitt

Leaking Oil Well Lacked Safeguard Device

The oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico didn't have a remote-control shut-off switch used in other major oil-producing nations as last-resort protection against underwater spills.

The lack of the device, called an acoustic switch, could amplify concerns over the environmental impact of offshore drilling after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig last week

Dick Cheney and his Haliburton (they are involved in this oil spill, remember?) lobbied for less regulation under Bush, and got it. No other nation in the world would allow drilling without these safeguards.

Recall what less regulation did for the bankers? (made them $billions, while it led to disaster for the rest of us).

Looks like less regulation did something similar for the oil industry ....

[DSchmitt]

we'll never really know the real story in any case...

but i think they're avoiding methods to close it that involve destroying it...making it unusable. if they can keep it in tact, they can just build a new rig and not even have to worry about redrilling.


what's to stop them from at least trying? is a nuke even necessary? can't they just drill, and load a few hundred pounds of dynamite right next to the pipe? even if it didn't work it'd probably cut the flow a bit. if they can find a way to steadily suck it up, they can both stop the leak and still collect barrels of oil to sell...probably paying for all their struggles... that are capped at 75 mill. but i don't think they'll ever find a way to steadily suck it up. till then it'll just keep on flowin till a new rig gets built...

explosives sure sounds better than that dome thing they tried...that probably cost a few million..

[feel the light]

Originally Posted by DSchmitt

we'll never really know the real story in any case...

but i think they're avoiding methods to close it that involve destroying it...making it unusable. if they can keep it in tact, they can just build a new rig and not even have to worry about redrilling.


what's to stop them from at least trying? is a nuke even necessary? can't they just drill, and load a few hundred pounds of dynamite right next to the pipe? even if it didn't work it'd probably cut the flow a bit. if they can find a way to steadily suck it up, they can both stop the leak and still collect barrels of oil to sell...probably paying for all their struggles... that are capped at 75 mill. but i don't think they'll ever find a way to steadily suck it up. till then it'll just keep on flowin till a new rig gets built...

explosives sure sounds better than that dome thing they tried...that probably cost a few million..

For sure, there is no plan to pull oil out of that drill pipe. The plan is to drill parallel wells, to the gushing well, and permanent seal it with cement. The cost of drilling a new well into the oil pocket, which is miles wide, and planned to have 15 wells put into it, is small. There will be no attempt to preserve the future production of oil from this hole, as soon as it can be cemented shut,maybe in August, it will be never used again. If BP could have done it long ago and preserved 1/2 their market value, and ability to pay future dividends, BP would have. The oil BP can collect and later sell from the surface, might be worth worth 100 million $. Against the maybe 100 billion+ they are almost certain to lose by this tragedy.
Let me pause for a moment, and pull out the world's smallest violin. A favorite of millions of old Brit's and Yank retirees, BP stock, could maybe match your SS check. Famous for fat dividends that were awesome back when oil was 150 $ /barrel, dividends was halved as oil price declined. Now, no dividend, and if you sell you have lost half your money. If you don't sell, there is a real chance you may lose all your retirement savings. For a company as huge as BP to go tits up, millions of people will suffer serious $. Most will not be billionaires or millionaires, or even have any airs. It will ruin a million people.

That said, It is still BP's fault, (encasing tiny violin) if there is no way to make corporations pay for their fubars, we will get more fubars. It sucks that millions of people have to take a serious $ hit, that many can ill afford. I wish it was as easy as blaming a few greedy billionaires, but that's not what BP is. No, we will punish the millions of BP share holders, it is our only logical way forward.

[DSchmitt]

just wondering, not arguing... if they were able to somehow contain the flow, how come they can't continue to use that well anymore? is it just too hard to hook back up to another platform like the horizon?

[feel the light]

If "top kill " had worked, they would stop the flow with 1000's of feet of drill mud, and put in a cement plug. That would allow them to replace the BOP, and reconnect the hole to a rig. They can't replace the BOP without first plugging the pipe.
The current plan is to intercept the pipe thousands of feet underground with a second drill rig. Supposedly this one won't blow out, because it is full all the way up with mud. Then they will cement it, deep underground.

There has also been some concern that the casing may have been damaged, allowing gas and oil to intrude into the surrounding rock. I think that is why they want to do the intercept so far underground. When I said drilling a second hole was cheap, I meant 50- 100 million$ cheap. BP has been losing more than that every day. They are also drilling a second relief well, that they should not need. This is to save time in case the first one hits a snafu, they can just finish the second well, instead of having to start the 4 month clock all over again.

I suppose it's possible neither will work. Pemex took about 8 months to shut off a blow out using this technique in the late 70's. Hopefully they are a little better at it now a days.

[feel the light]

There was only two kinds of men working at Avondale that day in '79. Guy's in dirty sweaty heavy cotton (it protects you from burns) wearing hard plastic hats. And the big hats, a very rare sight. They would show up in huge cars wearing huge stetson hats. They were the sons or son in laws of the yard owners, wealthy from birth, and took pride mostly in their size, booming voice, and the most prized skill of all...... the ability to scare the shit out of everybody in the room when they threw their hat down.

So I showed up that day, and things weren't right. We were building oil rigs(I was a tack welder). This particular project was called the jacket. Taking hundreds of men many months, it was the top part (above the water), that must be plugged into the rig sections below it that went like a tapered tower, all the way to the sea floor. The "Gulf Horizon", was a different bird. It floated. Ours was steel all the way down, like a sunk Eiffel tower.
I wasn't payed much, but had perhaps the best tacker position in the yard. A tacker is a fitters helper, who welds stuff at the fitters direction. I ended up with the top fitter, I think , because I'm a bit autistic, and a special detail I always took every day, without fail, was to talk and make friends with our crane operator. Sometimes we had two. We were often high in the air, in a basket at the end of the crane cable, in blindish spots. If the crane guy did the wrong thing,the fitter and I would die. Without exception every mourning I would meet our crane guys, even if they were the same guys from the day before, and spend a minute to go over our hand signals. This impressed the top fitter, and he made me his tacker. We were both in that crane basket together.

The rest of this story is to long for me to write now. Chapter 2, the parade of big hats, will come later.

[DSchmitt]

in other news.....the us debt is now at 13.1 trillion,

[feel the light]

As I was saying, things weren't right at work that day. No one was working. There was 3 huge cars parked next to our jacket, and three large men in nice clothes with big hats yelling at each other. Taking turns hollering "we can't sell this", cursing, and throwing their hats down. I asked my fitter what was up, but he just motioned me to stay back and keep quiet, which was my inclination anyway.

More big cars rolled up. More yelling and dirtying of hats as each new arrival was told the news. We can't sell this. By noon, 100 men had been standing around watching about 10 big hats yell back and forth "we can't sell this". Then I saw a puzzling thing. As the big hats watched, my fitter, a fine gentleman of about 60, who never raised his voice, was holding a small pipe in his hand. He rolled it smoothly across a steel plate. Then he heated one side of the pipe with a torch, and rolled it again. Now it wobbled. He heated it a bit more, then put water on it. He rolled it again, and now it was straight again. I was to far away to hear what they were saying. They had stopped shouting and were now mumbling in quiet tones to each other. They would take their hats off and hold them down in their hands and gaze at them respectfully, like men at a funeral, then put them back on. Finally, with all the enthusiasm of Longstreet ordering Picket's charge at Gettysburg, a gesture was made to the top fitter, who seemed quite cool and confident, in very sharp contrast to the the men around him.

My fitter walked over to me. "Run and tell the men to bring every rose bud (a huge torch) in the yard to the north jacket". "Yes sir", I replied, and set off
at full run. No one had cell phones in '79. Instructions were given personally, or with hand signals.

At first it was a difficult task. The yard was about a mile long, and about as wide, on the bank of the Atchafalia bayou. Coming up to the first crew (there was about 20 crews scattered about the yard, making oil rigs mostly, or refinery pipe stuff), I announced in the middle of a group of men that they must send a man with every rosebud torch they had to the north jacket immediately. No one moved. I tried repeating it, and a few guys just shrugged and said,"you aren't our foreman".

So I found the foreman of their crew and told him to move all rosebuds with a man to the north jacket. He said," who the #### are you" ?

Disappointed to have run so far so fast, only to waste time now, I became inspired by the occasion. I threw my hat down. I looked him in the eye and said, " I don't care who you are. You will get every rose bud you have to the north jacket, or I will never see you in this yard again. There are 10 big hats roasting in the sun standing by the north jacket waiting on your men. These are not my orders, they are yours. Keep the big hats waiting all day if you want. My orders are to tell every foreman in the yard what I have just told you, and I must go now." It worked, he started giving orders, and men were on the move.
It took me about 2 hours to jog down one side of the yard and back up the other talking to every foreman. I learned what worked best pretty soon. Throwing my hat down brought snickering and slowed things down, so the men could have time to laugh. Apparently you need a Stetson to pull that one off. Telling them that we can't sell the jacket, and that 10 angry big hats were waiting for them to bring gear up to fix it, worked almost instantly. It was the most fun I ever had in a ship yard. In fact I think I used up my lifetime quota of ship yard fun that day. Ship yards are to fun, what Disneyland is to misery.

Work had already begun by the time I got back to the jacket. It was an amazing spectacle. Word of the disaster had spread throughout the yard, and it was like a scene from Music Man. Only instead of 76 trombones, there was about 200 men standing shoulder to shoulder, holding burning rosebuds against a pipe made of 4 " thick steel about 12' in diameter. I was quite happy that I had done my job so well, there was no room for me in the line. These men were engaged in the hottest task I had ever seen performed in a southern shipyard, which is saying a lot. I appointed myself the new task of bringing them water, while the fitters and big hats waiting anxiously at the bottom of the jacket. Super long industrial tape measures had been stretched from corner to corner of the rig (We didn't any laser tapes then). Cries of "it's moving" rang out.

After about an hour of this, the top fitter gave the order. The rose buds were turned off. A second army of men approached the opposite side of the pipe and threw buckets of water at it. A tremendous sizzle sound filled the air, such as I was sure I would never hear again, nor ever see a cloud of steam so big. Tensely, the big hats stood around looking at the tape measures as if their lives and their first born depended on it, as it most surely did. The giant pipe contracted as the cooling water hit it. Huge "wahoo", and "yea hahs", suddenly ripped the air, and a group of ten men suddenly danced in a circle and threw their hats in the air. Then got back into their huge cars and drove off for some hookers and beer.

I went off to talk to our crane guys and go over hand signals and the top fitter went to look at blue prints and we were soon back to fitting the next pipe. Alone up in the basket I asked him what all that fuss was about and he told me the jacket had been correctly assembled, but it was cold in the morning, and the sun would warm one side of it first. No one tried to compensate for the thermal expansion of the metal. Although everyone had followed the blue prints correctly, assembling huge 100' long pipes while the rig was in different thermal states, resulted in errors. It was too warped to sell. He explained how to warp it back again, we did it, and it worked.

I feel an odd sense of pride looking back at it, even though my role was tiny. We had taken the world's largest white elephant, shorter than an air craft carrier, but not by much. Taller and wider too, with even fewer practical alternative uses, and made it fit spec so Avondale could sell it to Chevron. We did it without consultations with the original engineers. After the fitter explained to me what had happened, he said,"now let's not talk about this anymore. You don't really know anything about this and we will never speak of it again." I knew what he was saying. Hell, the whole yard knew.

That's the way the oil rig business was done then, and I can't imagine that it has changed. "Keep your job", was the mindset, and we all worked together to do that best we could.

[johnfoss]

Originally Posted by feel the light

"now let's not talk about this anymore. You don't really know anything about this and we will never speak of it again." I knew what he was saying. Hell, the whole yard knew.

And now you've told all of us. We're screwed. Plus it's posted on the Internet, where it will never go away. Everyone else is screwed too!

Thanks for that cool story, and all your insights from the inside of the oil/rig industry.

[feel the light]

There is no way I could have ran down the yard, and talked to every foreman. I was a tacker, reassigned as a guy who could now have some fun throwing his hat down. I talked to some foremans, but then just followed the tide of men to the north jacket. I helped create the flow best I could, but I am sure now, looking back, you know, after writing stuff, that many other gophers were sent off to requisition rose buds after me. I'm not saying I am a lier, rather, looking at the facts as I can remember them with more reflection, I only talked to maybe 5 foreman and only threw my hat down twice. Then a tide of men, likely caused by other gophers, surged towards the north jacket.

I want to make clear that the rest of my story was true. With reflection, I am quite sure I was one of many gophers. At the time I did it, I felt special, and that's the way I remember it. I was sent off first. I couldn't see who was sent off after me. I'm sure it was a bunch. There was no way in hell a bunch of big hats would entrust any important part of this operation to me.

[feel the light]

A gopher is the common word used in USA shops to name a person who has been sent to "go for" something. Although actual rodents might be cheaper, they tend to get lost .

[DSchmitt]

http://www.wpbeginner.com/worst-oil-...y-infographic/

[spazdude222]

I wonder if they've tried asking politely... I know it doesn't seem too viable, but maybe the oil well just wants to be treated with respect instead of pumped dry and abandoned...

[DSchmitt]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C3MD...re=ytn:mptnews