Fixing the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico

I am dumbstruck by the ineptitude displayed by the BP gulf oil leak. {Guess who bought BP stock 2 days before the leak started}. There is a line to call and offer solutions. I called and from the attitude of the folks who answered it seemed to suggest they were usually getting calls from people who are trying to sell some type of product, for the oil clean up I guess. 



Recent newscasts show that the techniques currently being used are the same as used in 1996 when there was a similar but shallower and smaller leak in Mexican waters. My big gripe is the folks responsible had none of this technology immediately available.



My suggestion, offered with trepidation of sounding too simple, was to seal off the pipe leaking that had the siphon poked inside of it I proposed putting a slightly larger pipe over the leaking pipe. The larger pipe could have torus shaped inflatable balloons
recessed in it which would be inflated once the pipe was put in place. The new slightly larger pipe could have a new cut off valve already installed on it {left open}. 



Once the new pipe & valve was in place you could drop another barrel over the entire contraption and fill it with concrete {with the valve protruding vertically from the barrel}. The balloons would prevent oil & mushy natural gas from flushing back into the concrete while is was curing. With the concrete set up and hard you could activate the cut off valve stopping the flow from that one pipe at least.



Those holes in the big box blow out preventer that are shown on the live feeds, I wonder if there would be a way to poke a Kevlar balloon {if such a thing exists} into each or at least the largest and then inflate the balloon like a
freeze plug replacement on an engine
block?



All of this seemed silly after the efforts to pump the "mud" into the system to back down the oil before pushing the concrete in started. But now they say that it is difficult to raise the pressure to push the oil down while the "mud" is leaking out of the existing holes.



I was asked to send a pdf file of my drawings of a limited file size by someone who did that without laughing. I didn't ,I just left the verbal description. I also explained their folks would have to provide all the physics for material physical properties at those depths also-hell I didn't know concrete could be used like that.



There seems to be a lot of vagaries in what is going on with the leak. All the diagrams I have seen differ and the live feeds no longer show the horizontally extended pipe that the siphon was in.



Anyone think of an obvious answer that seems to have been overlooked or point out the naivety in my suggestion ?

Well all that nonsense in #1 is a moot point now that BP has given up stopping the leak completely. I would have thought they could have pumped warm surface water down to a coil of pipe around one the "hats" that have been lowered over the leak and warm it enough to prevent the formation of the Methane hydrate ice. Here is a wiki Methane Hydrate Phase diagram . and 1 kilopascal = 0.00986923267 atm.

Here is a New York Times article quoted on cnbc explaining that BP was using what is called the "hurry up and f--- up" method in the construction trade because the rig was costing over $533 million dollars a day to rent {the rig that is now on the bottom of the gulf}.

Attempts at troubleshooting the process from the couch might be ludicrous but maybe working on several solutions simultaneously would be good - as the Obama administration had the company begin two new drill rigs to intercept and fill the leaking bore below the seabed instead of one as BP had planned.

If this is to off topic let me know. I am sure several people are writing books about this incident as it is happening.

I don't think that you are especially off topic, but if you are interested in a more active thread there is one here.

Robert

Thanks, great link I will have to jump in on the discussion.

I did some of my own calculations and came up with 62 degrees Fahrenheit as a good number to keep the "ice" clear, figuring the well head at 5000 ft. which I read somewhere and using 1 atmosphere pressure for every 10 meters of depth. When I went to check on the surface temperature of the Gulf of Mexico at this time the warmest areas at a quick glance looked suspiciously like the same areas where the oil slick is. The oil would be absorbing more heat perhaps. The surface temperature in the 80's would work for the mile pump down after you "let the hot water warm up the pipes" maybe - like in my house's rear bathroom.

I have not played with numbers like this in many years so feel free to correct me, I think the 62 degrees F might be a bit high but I am just estimating from the phase diagram which I hope I am interpreting correctly.

A New York Times article clarifies James Cameron's opinion of the efforts to clean up the oil spill i.e. “thinking those morons don’t know what they’re doing”. His explanation:

"That was taken out of context in a way that sounded like I was slamming BP. In a roundabout way, I was explaining that while I started out the way everyone did on this, I’d revolved to the point where I respect the engineering work that’s been under way. "

Mr. Cameron's expertise comes from extensive experience with underwater technology at depths twice that of the leaking well head. A further NYT quote :

"Cameron said he hoped that the effort to assemble the specialists at the meeting, whom he said represented perhaps 70 percent of the world’s expertise on deep-water engineering and diving, could serve as a template for dealing with fast-breaking technological emergencies. "

In spite of this conciliation I am glad to see that someone else has the feeling that the proper level of preventative technical expertise was not in place as it should have been. The methane ice should have been anticipated and solutions in place to make it not a problem.

It is going to be tough for the governmental regulatory agency and BP to explain why two simultaneous wells were not drilled at the same time, one being a reserve to block off the other if an uncontrolled "blow out" like we had occurs. This is the policy in other areas. I don't think "too expensive" a precaution is going to fly very far.

Once again at what looks like my personal blog here at L.T. .....

Here is a new idea to plug that hole since the pipe at the top has been cut off. Alia Sabur an engineering professor/wunderkind who got her PHD at 14 and became a professor at 18 {youngest professor ever}. She wants to {click
on video} poke a smaller pipe, with inflatable tires around it, into the gushing large pipe well head and then inflate the tires. Vaguely describing how it is to be held down, the video states that a standard size valve could be on the top and the oil pumped off while the well is being shut down.

She offers this if current solutions fail. Playing on the same concept why not make the top of her new assembly like a ground glass stopper that is used in old glass acid bottles. Putting a wedge of hard plastic around the outside edge of her inner pipe assembly where it would be flush with the top of the existing pipe would aid in stopping the flow perhaps.

Then again, at the point of absurdity, maybe a large lead tapered stopper with enough weight to hold the oil in but not split the pipe would work!! That would involve a lot of faith in the physical properties of the pipe and its damaged condition I guess.

There has been lots of misinformation and not much verifiable information on this disaster.
Certainly the internet stories by Sorcha Faal on this is almost certainly garbage, however a less suspicious group at the Oil Drum are speculating that the down hole pipe is fractured to the point of being uncappable.
I don`t claim to be a petroleum geologist, my training is all in hardrock but as I understand the dynamics of the process, the failure of the top kill does indicate a problem down hole. Which makes their current approach of open the hole and capture as much as you can probably the best of a bad situation.
As to why they have not tried other approaches as you mention above...they`ve never been a mile down before and I doubt that the gear necessary even exists.

"As to why they have not tried other approaches as you mention above...they`ve never been a mile down before and I doubt that the gear necessary even exists."

Yep, I watched Cramer the other night and he said he had spoken with several former oil company CEO's and others inside the industry and was told that all the stuff that had been tried "top hat", "junk shot" etc. were all BS, just to look busy while waiting on the secondary wells to be drilled. He also mentioned {while high on the fact the Pres had used the 20 billion? dollar fund set up he touted} that there were a significant number of wells in the North Sea drilled under even more trying conditions and of course the deep wells off South America.

I think the "necessary gear" should be a requirement before the resumption of deep well usage in the gulf, funny how the judges who tried to set aside the drilling moratorium have a better knowledge than anyone else of the topic! I sent a Sierra Club "chain letter" to the Prez. suggesting that demonstrable techniques be in place before suspending deep well moratorium and also have the resources for any clean up identified and hands on verified by someone. I read the big companies have subcontractors to do the clean up under contract in case of a mishap so it could be a multiple oil corporation effort.

Does anybody have a current reliable estimate of the wellhead pressure or the reservoir pressure? There are some rumors that claim the pressure is unusually high.

After a search here is a wiki answers page that gives no authentication of the "It has been estimated by experts that the pressure which blows the oil into the Gulf waters is estimated to be between 20,000 and 70,000 PSI (pounds per square inch)". answer presented. I also encountered a wacky post by a purported scientist who claims the abrasive content of the oil
will dissolve the pipe & bedrock, raise a mound in the seafloor and create a
20 to 40 foot tidal wave or some such.

A more reliable AP source I read today explained that there are 27,000 abandoned wells in
the gulf and they do "repressurize" themselves sometimes because of
geological movement or other factors.

In any event certainly a lot of wasted oil along with the environmental damage.

Wow! 20000 to 70000 psi! Same numbers I was hearing so maybe the same source. Better if it was an independent source. That range is bad news. Even at the low end it might complicate the relief well approach since ordinary clay has a density of only about 2 giving a pressure of only about 12000 psi at the bottom. Of course they could load the mud with heavy metal pellets to work up to a higher pressure. At 70000, it is very bad news since ordinary steel has a strength only about 50000 psi.

This estimate would explain why the original pressure guage went from 5800 to zero: maybe it just broke apart. It is also a good reason to continue the drilling moratorium.

Of course when (if?) they get the new cap on (and if it is heavy enough that it stays on) they can get a better estimate of this critical pressure. It will certainly be very interesting to see how this plays out.

Another intersting question is why we don't see more information about this question in news reports since the answer could have a significant effect on the ability to cap the well and hence on the environment.

Thanks for the quick answer, even if bad news.

Here is a photo of the pressure gauge on the new well head. It is
curious that this "new wellhead" technique is such a long time
coming. It lends credence to the thought that few if any designs or
materials for possible malfunctions were available before the accident -
especially any solutions for work at that depth. The gauge tops off at
10,000 PSI.

From Wiki "Pressure (the symbol: P) is the force per unit area applied in a direction perpendicular to the surface of an object. Gauge pressure is the pressure relative to the local atmospheric or ambient pressure" So I am guessing they are measuring the alleged 20k-70k psi relative to the water & air pressure at 5000 ft ?.

Here is a blog {which appears to be a cut & paste from the NYT} by some "Craig"
guy with good illustrations and explanations of the well head blow out
preventer parts. The cut off "ram" on the original BOP was the emergency
stop and there was only one, the article explains that now more than one is normally
used.
A "3 ram capping stack" is the title of the new cap placed on 7/13/2010
so I guess there are 2 redundant rams to cut off the oil if the cap holds.

At last! Quantitative pressure readings. As of Friday morning BP was giving 6700 psi which presumably refers to the relative pressure of the oil inside the cap and the sea water outside. I think this is called the wellhead pressure. This is the presssure which the blowout preventers have to hold and the cap must be strong enough to resist and hold together and heavy enough to contain.

This means the reservoir pressure would be about 4k psi larger if there are no leaks in the well pipe, ie., about 11k. At that pressure there will be no big problem to fill the pipe with mud or cement from the relief wells. That pressure will decrease as oil and gas escape from the well, so it could have been higher when the blowout occured, maybe as high as 20k or more. As DugsBooks pointed out, it may increase when the well is capped, probably from gas and oil seeping in from below or from nearby fields. For this reason it would be a good idea for that pressure to continue to be monitored. If the pressure continued to increase to the range of 20k to 70k, it could complicate the relief will operation or even rupture the cap or lift it off the sea floor.

Some news reports state that BP was assuming that if the pressure was constant, it would imply that there were no leaks from the well pipe. This is not a valid implication. If there was a leak, the reservoir pressure could be much higher. So far I have not seen independent reliable estimate of the reservoir pressure. The reports stated that the ocean floor was being monitored for oil seeping up, which is a good idea, but if the leak were far down in the pipe it could be a long time before oil would rise to the ocean floor.

It seem to be too early to assume that the leak has been permanently stopped.

As of Sunday afternoon, no more numbers, but hints that the well head pressure was rising but not as much as BP expected. The photo of the pressure guage (graciously submitted by DugsBooks) with a range of only 10k, suggests that BP knows more about the pressures than they are telling. Is it possible that the pressures involved in deep water drilling are trade secrets? Certainly the government agencies monitoring drilling should be informed of these pressures. It would be very interesting and perhaps useful to compare the measured value of 6700 with the pressure histories of other Gulf of Mexico wells for the purpose of predicting what is likely to happen to this well and its cap in the future.

#14 Good summation; From news reports I understand that the pressure steadily rising & then stopping can be interpreted as the well "holding" with no leaks. If the pressure rises and then drops that is indicative of a leak somewhere. These are generalized indicators of course .

I also heard on the news that BP will be fined by the barrel for oil spilled, I think the amount was over $3,000 usd per barrel!!! - which would be a motivation for not providing any well head pressure data that would inflate estimates of oil leaked was implied by the newscasters. {sorry no link yet}

For whatever reason, I think BP's wanting to keep the well capped until the "bottom kill" procedures are executed with the new wells is a good notion. the 3 days the well would spill uncontrolled again before the oil could be pumped to waiting ships would result in an oil spill that, under normal circumstances,would be a major oil spill event itself. I am guessing that if a leak from anywhere in the well to the ocean bed developed the fear is that erosion from the oil leaking up could enlarge the path of leak and increase in volume suddenly?

Another number! I heard 6811 psi on NPR a few minutes ago. They also gave a rate of increase of one lb per hour. At that rate the pressure could cause serious damage in a few months.

In another news story I saw a reference to a "Federal Science Team". A search on this term turned up several interesting sites, but I had time to access only a few. One stated that Steven Chu is on the team so somebody there knows how to evaluate the situation. Another confirmed the 6700 original pressure and gave an expected pressure of 8000 psi, but without any idea of where that number came from or the definition of either pressure (relative to what?). At least it said that the science team had access to detailed pressure data, so maybe we can worry less.

I think DugsBooks is right about BP's motivation. Erosion of the seep is also a problem and also any seismic event could open cracks and affect the pressure and hence the flow.

When it is all over, the details of the engineering and scientific response should make a very interesting book.

"When it is all over, the details of the engineering and scientific response should make a very interesting book."

Certainly agree with that - if it's written by one of the engineers involved who knows the 'true story'.

More numbers! This morning on NPR Cmdr. Allen said that the estimate of 7500 to 8000 psi for the expected wellhead pressusre came from an estimate of the reservoir pressure of 11 k to 12 k less the pressure of the oil in the pipe. Unfortunately he did not give a source for this pressure. Since the Deepwater Horizon was described as the first and only well drilled in the Macondo field, it is not clear where this value could come from and whether it is current. However the Cmdr. said he was working with engineers from all oil companies so maybe they have a way of getting at an oil field pressure. He also understood that an examination of the blowout preventer would give a clue as to the original pressure that caused the blowout and which seemed much higher than 8k psi. The 'methane kicks' could have been something like local pressure peaks due to movement in the rocks at the bottom of the well. The same problem could come up in other future wells.

He sounded like a very competent person who understood what was going on and not likely to leave unfinished business there even though it appeared that the flow had been stopped. Another reason to worry less. As #17 said, who writes the book is important, but Cmdr. Allen would be OK for me.

Soon we will come to the moment of truth. If the reservoir pressure is about 11 or 12 k psi the drilling mud will kill the well without any major problems. If it is higher, there will be complications, in the worst case, another blowout from the relief well. We can be confident in Adm. Allen's ability to handle this situation whatever happens, but the questions of initial value of the pressure at the blowout and how the reservoir pressure is estimated are still not clear to me. These questions are important since they determine safety rules for any other deepwater drilling as well as procedures for keeping this well capped.

The estimate of 20k to 70k psi may have been made on the assumption that all the well components including the blowout preventer were working properly. When those parts are salvaged they may give a clue as to the peak pressure they have experienced.

There is an interesting possible explanation for exceptionally high pressures. That is the idea that the Gulf of Mexico oil fields are the remains of the comet the carved out the shape that body of water millions of years ago. This ties in the the continuing debate as to whether oil is a mineral or a biological residue. Maybe the geological literature has hints on pressures in the Gulf of Mexico oil fields. Does anybody have anything suggestions on this?

If a book on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was written by a journalist it would probably be of little scientific interest. A book written by a member of the Federal Science Team would likely be more interesting.

The comet that caused the Triassic(?) extinctions didn't cause the shape of the Gulf of Mexico. The remnants of the crater actually overlap the Yucatan peninsula and the Gulf.

So far so good. And we have another number! One news report said the drilling mud weighed 13.2 lbs per gallon. If the mud column extended from the sea floor down and there were no leaks that would mean the reservoir pressure was less that about 9000 psi.
relative to the sea floor. Good news but I there does not seem to be any way to insure that the damaged pipe would have no leaks, so the well cannot yet be considered as closed with certainty. Adm. Allen is doing exactly the right thing to insist that BP complete the relief well and pump in mud and cement from the bottom. As an extra, this may give some additional information about pressures in the Macondo oil field.

An interesting side light on this is the coincidence of the field name, Macondo, with the name of the fictious village in the Gabriel Marquez novel, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" That book describes the history of that village from its founding to its complete destruction and with the 'disposal' of all the principal characters. It has been called, in literary terms, a 'complete novel' (novela total) since it describes a closed world (mundo cerrado) and does not allow any logical sequel. The Deepwater Horizon well was the first in the Macondo field and maybe, in analogy, we should hope that it will be the last, but if it is not, at least we should try to have as much information about that field's pressure characteristics as possible.

Responding to #22 & my own ranting

I like Gabriel Marquez's novels but I can't remember much about them after awhile - they read like having a dream to me and seem to disappear the same way.

." If the mud column extended from the sea floor down and there were no leaks that would mean the reservoir pressure was less that about 9000 psi." I guess the extra mile of mud from the well head to the ship above provided a lot of pressure to help push the oil back down.

In retrospect the final method to stop the oil flow seems ironic in that when I first called BP, and there were several people participating in some kind of conference call thing, "just cutting the damn pipe in half and bolting a new valve on it" was brought up {I said it sounded great to me} but was booed down because of the amount of time the well would flow unimpeded and unknown damage to the blow out prevention stack. {I am certain all of this attentiveness to callers was just publicity spin}

I have read that several oil companies have pooled resources and created a billion dollar plus fund to have the proper technology and resources available for any similar incidents in the gulf. Also it was mentioned that the Macondo field is still being considered for drilling although I think the guvment will pull up the blow out preventer and investigate that for criminal negligence before the field is tapped again.

I would think the "pressure characteristics" of an oil field are monitored constantly as a matter of course in drilling, since it would seem that would predicate the type of methods being used. Straying away from accepted methodologies might come around to bite bp on the arse in court yet perhaps after all the info is sifted through.

Responding to #23 with some dreams:

It depends on whether the pipe was closed all the way down or open at the sea floor, ie., whether the oil in the well pipe was pushed back down or allowed to escape to the sea floor or delivered to a tanker. In the latter case, the mud would be backed up only by the pressure of the sea water. This is the important case since when the pipe is disconnected, the only counter pressure is that of the water, and that will be what is left after all operations there are closed down.
If the operation depended on the pressure in the pipe or tube delivering the mud to the well head, another blowout could occur when it was disconnected. Of course that would be countred if they then filled the well with cement. There are certainly many questions here about the exact structure of the well pipe and and equipment, the exact oprations performed, as well as the pressure history.
They evidently monitored the pressure while drilling, since there was a report of a guage showing 5800 psi, but there does not seem to be any record of peak value of pressure pulses (methane kicks). My impressions is that was these pulses that caused the rig crew to be apprehensive about continued operations before the blowout. Some of these might have been much larger than expected, ie., a "black swan' event. Of course that is no excuse for BP ignoring the safety regulations or the experience based thinking of the rig crew. I certainly hope that they can bring up the old blowout preventer and other equipment for an analysis which should go into the design of future equipemnt and regulations. If this field has higher than normal presssure or eratic large variations in pressure, that information should also go into the design of future blowout preventors and into future safety regulations. Again, Adm. Allen seems to doing the right thing by continuing the drilling moratorium until everything is settled even if that is much later than the certain closure of the well (which has not happened yet). My dreams are that we will someday understand the interior geology of our planet and that there will never again be a disaaster like the Deepwater Horizon blowout.

Responding to message #23

Lots of news, lots of pressure tests but no new numbers and no details on exactly what was measured. One report said that the annulus surrounding the well pipe has some oil in it, which probably explains what happened to the oil that was in the pipe when the mud was pumped in. Adm. Allen says he does not need to apologize for an over abundance of caution. He is surely correct. Steven Chu, maybe speaking for the Federal Science Team, said that he is worried that the cement did not go into the well as fast as it should have, and that the bottom kill may generate enough counter pressure to damage the well cap. At least it seems that someone there understands that pressure is the driving force and can understand the interaction of the various pressures effective in the system to produce the observed action or stability.

To understand this a little better, it must first noted that the configuration described in message #23 is the most likely, ie. the mud and cement were injected in a continuous tube from the sea surface. The mud, at 13.2 pounds per gallon, would then produce a static pressure of 12 k psi so the reservoir pressure could only be less than that pressure. The cement, at about 165 pounds per cubic foot would produce a static pressure of about 20 k psi relative to the surface and a pressure about 14 psi when the pipe was cut at the sea floor, and thus would be able to hold the reservoir pressure. When the relief well started pumping cement into the bottom, it would produce that 19 k pressure and hence, in a static situation and no cavities, leaks etc., enough pressure on the cap to possibly damage it, since it is only known to resist the 12 k pressure of the reservoir. I hope this gives a reasonable explanation of what Dr. Chu is worried about.

Now we need to wait until September to see how this all works out.

No new presssure values, but lots of tidbits of inforomation. In the a news report about the enquiry as to the cause of the blowout, we find various terms like
channeling
bottoms up
negative pressure
tremendous pressure
gas migration
cement bond log
centralizers
with none of these explained except 'centralizer' which is defined as a part which keeps the well pipe centered in the well casing creating a space between them called the annulus. Even in that case, not enough description is given to decide if the centralizer is a disk with a hole in the middle for the well pipe and thus obstructs the passage of fluids in the annulus or is made of struts and thus allows fluids to pass. We infer that if the management of BP and the other companies involved had as fuzzy a notion of what was happening as the journalists, it is no wonder that a major disaster occured and we may expect more in the future unless some major changes come about in the way such companies are managed. If the same applies to the lawyers and judges involved in the inquiry, we need not be surprised if gross injustices occur in assigning responsibility for what happened.

This inference is partly confirmed by the following sequence of events related in the news report on the enquiry. While the oil was still leaking from the well head, BP put the cofferdam (a 100-ton, four-story-high steel dome maybe with valves to allow connection to pipes leading up to waiting tankers) in place over the leak. Unfortunately the cofferdam started floating up toward the surface.

If the coffer dam had a internal roof (top surface) of a circle of 20 in, diameter, a wellhead pressure of 5000 psi. would have exerted an upward force of 750 tons, and could easily lift it off the sea floor. Since a pressure of 5800 psi had a been registered before the blowout, this should not have been too much of a surprise, but apparently the engineers were expecting the open valves to reduce the upward pressure.

The news report implied that the coffer dam was floating up toward the surface. Since the bouyant force is equal to the weight of the displaced water, it would need a bubble of methane of about 3000 cu. ft. to lift the 100 ton coffer dam We don't know the design of the coffer dam, but it was given as 4 stories high, or about 40 ft. high, which implies that the cross section would need to be about 80 ft. sq. to float it. In that case the upward force of the 5000 psi static presssue would be over 20000 tons. If hydrates formed in the valves and slowed the oil flowing out even by a small amount and even a small part of the static upward lift developed, it would lift the cofferdam off the sea floor. In that situation, oil would flow out to the sea floor, but that configuration might seperate out the methane most of which might flow into the coffer dam and accelerate formation of hydrates in the valves, ultimately allowing accumulation of a bubble of methane in the coffer dam and floating upward. All this is very speculative since we don't know the design of the coffer dam or the physical condition of the hydrates (more like slush or ice cubes) but it provides a possible explanation of a floating coffer dam, and shows how the extremely high pressure can destabalize an intuitively stable configuration.

The news report says that by his own admission, a BP Vice president managing the operation, when confronted the information that "we lost the coffer dam", said

‘What the hell do you mean you’ve lost the cofferdam? How did you lose it? Don’t give me that!’

Since any student in high school physics
could do the above calculation it is apparent that the VP had not given any thought to what might occur in putting this dome over the leak.

This tale confirms and explains the stupidity refered to in message #1 and other early messages in this sub group. We may wonder if the managers of companies that may drill deep wells in the future have any concept the possible effects of the pressures which may be encountered in the wells. Again it is a good idea to continue the drilling moratorium.

Also from the report of the enquiry we learn that after this the Federal Science Team took over and since then, progress has been made in plugging the well, for which we should all be grateful. Actullly what may have happened here is that the science team had the authoriyt to put the BP engineers in charge and not the financial managers.

Here is a photo of the offending well head after the blowout preventer was removed . At this time the BP is hanging at 300 feet waiting for accumulated frozen methane hydrates to melt off before being hauled up to the ship. Wonder what the temperature is at 300ft.?

Responding to #27.

Very interesting photo. Is the circular aperture the top of the well pipe or the casing? In either case it seems mostly intact. What is that thing angling off to the left? Evidently 'altitude' = 13 ft. means the distance the top is above sea floor.
I would think that the temperature at a depth of 300 feet would not be much different than the surface temperature, but maybe that means 300 ft. altitude above the sea floor, in which case the tempeature should be almost the same as at the wellhead. Do any of the other numbers refer to a scale of the photo?

The most interesting thing about the photo came to my mind about 10 minutes after I submitted the above message and signed out. By then I was doing something else. The question is where is the concrete that was pumped into the well? Maybe it was just never filled up to the top. Another explanation is that the slug of concrete slid down the well head, but dry concrete is not flexible and those wells are hardly ever exactly straight, so the slug could not have slid around the curves without breaking up. The most likely explanation is that concrete shrinks on drying, so the top part did slip down the well before it was completely dry. Does that work?

Good question, never thought of that! Along with that photo were others of the same well head. One showed a device sitting on the well head, looked kind of like a tambourine, which was scouring the the pipe in preparation of the mounting of the new blow out preventer. Maybe they ground some of the concrete down?

Or maybe with careful measuring of the volume of the concrete pumped you could send down water once the concrete had reached a desired level in the pipe. The density/weight of the crete would have already started pushing the oil back down and that would keep the concrete from setting up in the mile of pipe to the surface maybe?

Here is a cross post from the environmental Group on the oil that was leaked.

Click on the below for an article describing the discovery of a big layer of
oil at the gulf bottom, evidently treated with surfactants, from the BP/Mercado oil leak.

Focusing
in on oil.

By Samantha
Joye | Published:
September
6, 2010 8:55am

Photos of some of the stuff found.

At last! It is closed and it closes out in a blaze of glory: a pressure number! At 8 am (MST) I heard a male voice on NPR announce the closure and state that "a pressure of 15,000 pounds was used" and that 74 barrels of cement were pumped in. Hoping to hear more details, I listened again at 9 am and heard a female voice announce the closure but omit any and all numbers. Is this a gender difference showing up or did the NPR staff decide that the only people interested in numbers were the geeks and other weirdos that would listen to the radio at 8 am on Sunday morning?

In any case the number suggests that the reservoir pressure is less than 15,000 psi and more importantly that the engineers estimates of that pressure ranged up to 15 k psi as compared to the photo of the 10 k pressure guage in message 12. This in turn would lead us to hope that after the drilling moratorium is lifted, deep drillers would be required to be able to measure and withstand pressures of up to at least 15,000 psi.

Will there be any more drilling in that field? Dr. Patzek of the U. of Texas says: why not? There is lots more oil there, the relief wells could easily tap into it, the methane kicks were typical of Gulf of Mexico wells and they could be handled safely. The suggestion that the methane kicks are different in the Golf of Mexico, reminds me again of the theory that the Gulf was produced by the impact of one or more comets (or a cometary cluster). This would have to be comets from outside the Solar system (or at least from the Oort belt) which would be loaded with frozen hydrocarbons (since they had not yet approached the Sun) and might have enough velocity (since it came from far away and might meet Earth head on) to bury the hydrocarbons deep in the earth on impact. Geologists have never liked to allow that astronomical bodies could affect their field and this idea is no exception, but the Earth had to have been formed by the impacts of similar celestial bodies and it is not unreasonable to expect traces of those impacts to show up in the heterogeneous nature of the Earth's interior. If this theory has any truth, there could still be surprises in more extensive and deeper drilling.

Still lots of unanswered questions. Maybe some member of the science team will write a book about it.

Meanwhile Missippi Canyon Block 252 is dead for now. May it rest in peace.

Some conflicting findings on the BP oil disaster. Here is a cut & Paste from an AP news article:

"WASHINGTON – The presidential commission investigating the massive Gulf oil spill has found no instance where a decision deliberately sacrificed safety to cut costs.

Fred H. Bartlit, Jr., the panel's chief counsel, in a presentation Monday said the probe did not uncover any case where an individual made a conscious choice to "favor dollars over safety."

That statement conflicts with investigations by Democrats in Congress who have accused BP of cutting corners when it made several critical well design decisions. Those decisions have also been questioned by other major oil companies."

Link to above:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101108/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_investigation

I am interested to hear from experts who review the commission's paper. It looks like the line drawn between what is safe and what is "safe enough" is being argued over.

Dug, could you fix your photos in #31 to be a smaller size. Or you could just make them line up vertically instead of horizontally. Right now they're making me have to scroll back and forth to be able to read your posts.

#34 I will give it a shot but with my html skills you are flirting with disaster! ;-)

I find huge photos distracting at times also but I thought these were a rarity, very illustrative and easy & quick to grasp.

I subtracted 100 from the pixel counts of width and the software {MSFT Frontpage} kept the height in proportion, I hope that helps a bit. I have two screens one is a wide "movie" type screen made for wasting your brain on you tube {It looks fine on that one} and the other an older style meant for newspaper type columns I guess. Let me know if that works out.

:::edited for a better description of the process .:::

Well, most people can't figure out how to make the pictures appear in the thread so so far you're a wizard.

Finally! I missed the wonderful NY Times series on this event. But I hear Carl Safina has recently come out with a book on this topic (too new - no touchstone?).

Is A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout it?

Robert

That's it Robert, I'm having an ongoing bout of touchstone-itis.

Aha!!, I dropped by the library to pick up a book and found a shelf with at least half a dozen books on the BP Caribbean Gulf oil disaster and chose one Fire on the Horizon to check out. I was looking for writers with science degrees but most were by "reporters", "environmental" writers or some such. The authors of this book John Konrad, a "veteran oil rig captain" and Tom Shroder , a writer/reporter, looked like they could provide some information. When I picked it up I thought Konrad had actually served on the rig but after reading the jacket again I see he worked for Transocean on different rigs.

I have not started reading it yet.

I just finished Fire on the Horizon and it was a great chronological explanation of what happened. The authors also give a lot of background on the offshore industry, describing incredible technological techniques that sound like science fiction.

The book focuses mainly on the people and the drilling rig and the aftermath of the blowout, when the rig sinks, is mentioned in the epilogue. An almost hourly description of what happened is related in the last few chapters when the blowout begins.

The snafu with the ice hydrates that foiled the busted well oil recovery effort was evidently the result of an accident and not bad planning {I suspicioned as much}. To quote the book

"The dome was lowered over Macondo on May 7, but soon clogged with slushy a mix of frozen gas hydrates after an ROV collided with the cap and accidentally shut off a deicing system."

I found the book an informative and exciting read which humanized the people who were lost and injured by the accident instead of leaving them as statistics. Even the least ranking of the regular crew were virtual master of all trades MacGyvers
The technical expertise of the drilling rig crew was surprising and impressive.