OT- Gulf Oil Spill

Here's an interesting opinion piece on what is probably really happening with the oil well and what we are not being told by the government and BP. If its anywhere close to whats really happening we haven't seen nothing yet.
Deep Water Oil Spill

That's a lot of reading. A thought that occurred to me is, why couldn't they use the empty hull of a ship, plumbed with whatever pipes or hoses they use, and lower it inverted over the leak? Then pump what is captured until relief wells can be drilled.

That would be an awful lot of metal to be trying to maneuver a mile deep in the ocean. Too many variables and too big to work most likely.

No offense, but that's the worst idea I've heard since this thing started. Lowering a tanker a mile underwater?

Let's say you could navigate it down there through all the currents, which you couldn't, how would you raise it when full?

Why not catch what you can and give it to U.S. for free until fixed.Then they would fix it. Ha

AN idea is better than none at all.

Lets hear your idea then! At this point there are no bad ideas, anything that might stop or slow this thing needs to be tried, it is clear the government and the industry have no clue how to fix this catastrophe.

Hi MN Scott: I read most of the entire link and I got the feeling it just may be more accurate then what I've seen on national 5:30 news... I also think the two relief wells may be the "Last Chance" to kill it. Getting multi wells into that reserve, to empty it, is a shot in the dark well into the future... Very serious for certain. It the two relief well fail, it will get much worse, it appears, by reading that link...
Thanks forposting the link.. ag

I was thinking in terms of a large "funnel" to put over the leak to catch the oil as it's coming out.. not contain it there but have hoses through which to pump it to the surface. Steel hulls come in a lot of sizes, and yes it's almost inconceivable to position it a mile deep. But so is drilling wells that far down, miles below the surface, then drilling sideways for miles.

You would think by seas laws of salvage a person could just take it, must not be much value.

Our former President would have had it fixed by now.

A friend in the oil business was telling me most of that the other night. Said pressure was the biggest problem with weak casing.
He said he's responsible for spills in an area, and said some small lakes and townships had skimmers. He said how they fixed spills was hydrogenated lime was put on it, it sank to the bottom and turned to fertilizer.

How would he do that, pat the BP CEO on the back and say good job Brownie?

A funnel is kinda what that first thing was that they lowered wasn't it? That thing that was the size of a 4 story building? It clogged with ice crystals didn't it? I don't know. Maybe they need to put it back on with more weight on it if it clogged. Isn't that what they're trying to do anyway?

Could just send down some redneck in scuba gear with some rags and a crate slat and have him jam'em in around the pipe that they have over it now and plug up the leaks around it. I know some fellas out east of town that might try it for a few cases of beer.

The tunnels across the bay from Virgina to Maryland are over 3 miles each and are steal.they got them down years ago.

Methane hydrate is what stopped the first containment device they attempted to use...Truely believe its what they are afraid of down there...

think about it there are a few large deposits of hydrates in the gulf...When it is released from its frozen state it expands 160 times.....They figure one of those pockets contains more energy than all the oil we've consumed and will ever get out of the ground...Most oil wells have natural gas at around 5 per cent,this one(and you have to remember they have fudged the numbers all along)is supposedly at 40 per cent.......[/url] http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/2558946

My idea is to make a plug that collapses like an umbrella. It would have to go down to the end collapsed & then opened to plug the leak at the source. It is too late to try to stop it anywhere above. The reason they are not collecting all the oil is that there isn't enough refinery capacity to use it all & the price would be dropping.

If that outside pipe is 36" then maybe get a pipe say 50" with a sleeve thats 38" inside of it and lower it down there by forcing water down it,around the 36"casing and then take it deeper than the 36" pipe.then pump concrete down the 50" pipe until it is set in there good and then run a bigger drill pipe down around all of that mess of 22 inch pipe,like a 30"drill pipe down say 6000 feet,and concrete the outside of it.Then put a valve on that and shut it off.Maybe run the pipe up off the floor a ways with real thick pipe that will support that Blow Out Prevention valve and put a valve on that to shut it off.

The ship hull was mentioned on TV by somebody in Louisiana, except use it on the surface to pull it upside down over the oil as it rises,then when it gets full pull another one in its place,pump the oil out of the first one into a tanker,pull another full one off and put the pumped out one over the oil.They thought they could get millions of gallons that way.Seems to make sense to me.If they cant stop the oil from flowing,they might as well catch as much as they can off of the surface.What they need is some kind of big oil/water seperator,maybe like a cream separator,to catch more oil out of the water.

Or one great big pipe like 10 foot around,with a sleeve inside to fit over the outer casing and rigged so that it can be used to force water down and sink the big pipe,then fill the area with concrete and make the area around the damaged casing a lot stronger and maybe cap it off some way.If the big pipe had holes in the sides to allow the oil to go through it while they lowered it,but could turn it and close the holes once it was in position and anchored with concrete,maybe they could fix it where they could run a regular casing off of the top of it by turning it a quarter turn,closing the holes,and running the oil up a casing pipe.

I dont know, except anything besides this all is lost, doom and gloom.Oil running like this and already have a slick the size of the state of Washington,is not going to get any better.

my point.

tlak,

Either that or he would stand on a ship and declare "Mission Accomplished", when in fact we have just begun.

Many experts from LSU have said all along that the only chance we have of stopping this leak is threw the relief well. Any and all other attempts are just mask effects to calm the public and give them time to drill the wells.

While the relief well is ahead of schedule we are still 30 to 60 days away from them intersecting the original well.

What I do not understand is why the government can not put their political agenda aside; waive the Jones Act for a short while; and allow countries that have boats specially built for this type of crisis come in and help us.

Hi John in LA: The 2 relief wells being the only or best chance is what I got from the link MN Scot started this string with... I heard last Fri, Jun-18, that one relief well was within several hundred feet.. but the remaining short distance is most important. I guess they use magnetic images to "see" where the original pipe is.. Maybe they will wait untill both relief wells can attach at same time to provide a double effort to kill the original well? .ag

I don't think anyone here has the knowledge or experience to really understand what's going on, nor how to fix it. As that article said, it's probably not fixable, and I've had that feeling for a while. And all that they've been doing was just for show, due to public pressure to see something done.

What about all the frozen mush hydrates bunging things up?
How much does an upside down ship hull hold?
How do you hoist a succession of large heavy upside down ship hulls up and down around the well?

Force and pressure makes it impossible. Unless the pipe was filled with Joe's magnets........Yah, that would work and make free unlimited power at the same time.

I have to ask something, and maybe I'm stupid, but it sure seems as though there's a lot of oil gushing out under a lot of pressure.

My job takes me in refineries from time to time, and every year I have to recertify for safety, security, and whatever else at these refineries, and since 9-1-1 its gotten real strict, and so be it.

Here's why I ask. Last year while going through the safety portion, they made us watch a safety video of a real platform and fire not so different than this one that happened somewhere in the world. Anyway, the platforms in the video were joined underwater by feeder pipe, that then either sent one pipe inland, or had one pipe for filling tankers, I don't recall. But in the video, evrything that could go wrong did go wrong, and when the one platform blew up and pumps shut down, the pumps from the other platforms bagan pushing their oil onto the burning platform, back feeding it I guess, and believe it or not, that burning platform sank as well taking I don't remember how many guys with it all the way to the bottom.

I swear to God, and may lightning strike me dead if I'm lying, when I saw what happened to this platform from day one until the day that it sank, I thought of that video that I saw a year ago of real live footage, and a question that I have is that if the platforms in last year's video were joined by under water pipe, why couldn't or wouldn't these, or the one causing the problems now? Could it be, and folks know about it but aren't admitting it? Again, maybe I'm stupid, but it sure seems like there's a whole lot of oil coming out under a whole lot of pressure.

And by the way, when they drill these oil wells so far out, we never hear about oil gushers gone awry during the drilling and tapping process.

Someone educate me. Clearly I don't understand the mechanics of oil drilling and the apparent hydraulic pressures created.

Thanks much everyone.

Mark

Now, (FullSarcOn), You know we just can't waive the JonesAct. Because we might put a union man out of a job.(SarcOff). That's the reason, though, TheOne doesn't want to step on any union toes. After all, He is bought and paid for by the unions.
Jack

The way they wanted to do it was use the ship hulls upside down on the surface.I think he said 6 million gallons per hull.Of course you wont catch all of it,but if they had been doing this since the first day the slick would be a lot smaller than it is.The only thing I didnt understand about it was how they separated the water from the oil,but he said modern tankers can do that?I guess that they pull un upside down ship hull over where the oil is coming up,let it fill up,pull it off somewhere close and pump it onto a tanker,then when the tanker is full,move another tanker in and keep on.Surely they can haul 2 or 3 months worth of oil somewhere close and pump it off the tanker,even if they had to truck it somewhere,to keep it from getting in the Gulf Of Mexico.They could crank up a few more refinerys or something because once it gets mixed with water real bad then it would probably not be worth catching.With a slick the size of the state of Washington,it might be hard to do this now.I guess they could burn a big patch of it off so they have room to work.

While they are doing this they need to rig up some kind of separator system and work on the slick.It would take a long time to catch all of that mess.It seems to me that somebody had some ships rigged with something like that in the 1970s.There was some oils spilled somewhere in the 1970s,maybe California or Florida and I kind of remember them having some kind of a thing like that on a ship.Of course there was no oil slick as big as this one back then,but they managed to clean it up if I remember right.
I dont know how they would sink a ship hull that deep.I wouldnt think they could do it very easy.
Whatever they tried to do with the casing would have to allow the oil to flow through it on the inside,but on the outside allow water to be pumped down it.I dont know if that would be possible.It sure is a mess from what the article says,and it will just get worse unless they do something to try and save it.I dont have any idea if what I thought of would even work or not,and it would take time to do about anything.The boat hulls on the surface could be the best bet.They can be positioned by tug boats.

I think whats been going on is more like this.BP caused this mess and now they are overwhelmed because of cutting corners.Anything they do will cost a lot of money,so they want to try the cheapest ways to fix it first.Maybe they think by trying these cheap ways it will buy them time until a relief well is drilled that doesnt stand a good chance of fixing it,but its the only thing they can think of.

At first I think they thought that after all the years of setting things up to where they could duck responsibility,on paper they thought they could duck responsibility,or at least the big shots did.So they arrogantly avoided spending any more money than they abosolutly had tnce it went bad,and they finally had to really look at it,they saw that since they killed people,they were in for big trouble.Their lawyers probably didnt figure on all of the safetys failing,plus they were paid to tell the big shots what they wanted to hear.Everything was all cozy for the oil companys during the previous administration.They suddenly had a big problem,and probably know its going to get worse.Plus so bad that it could bankrupt them.So they will try and get along with the government a while by paying until they go bankrupt.

Its a sad situation,and its not getting much better.BP claims to have spent 2 billion already.It wont take long for them to blow through 20 billion.It would be good if it was fixed before they spend 20 billion,but thats doubtfull would be my guess.

Now that the arrogance caused a big mess,they put a scapegoat on TV and he is not really helping them.About the time they start fixing it they will blame it all on him,and fire him,if they dont go broke first.

It doesnt seem like they are even listening to ideas,they just are going to do this stuff until they have to stop.Just like probably what caused this,people telling the big shots what they wanted to hear,the big shots are being told this stuff will work,because thats what they want to hear.

I could be wrong.I sure hope they figure out something and do it,and it works.