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BP and the Government Are Underplaying the Difficulty of Stopping the Oil Leak
While BP and the government say that permanently capping the oil well is no problem, they act like they have no idea what they're doing.
Indeed, Admiral Thad Allen is now saying "We’re concerned about the vital signs of this well":
He's also saying that completion of relief well will be delayed until
mid-September, at the earliest, and that the government is looking for
problematic “material” in the well:
What's really going on?
Well, initially, if the well had structural integrity,
there wouldn't be concern about the "vital signs" of the well, there
wouldn't have been delay after delay in completing the relief wells,
there wouldn't be never-ending rounds of new tests, there wouldn't have
been an attempt to seal it (or perhaps more accurately, patch it) from
the top using cement, there wouldn't be an attempt to remove "material"
from the well.
Indeed, what does
"removing material" even mean? Does that mean removing crumpled casing
or drill pipe, or does it mean clearing out caved-in portions of the
well and trying to rebuild those portions from scratch?
Moreover, one of the world's top experts in oil drilling disasters - Dr.
Robert Bea - told me yesterday that the geology underneath the seafloor
at the leak site is fractured, and includes very loose salt formations.
This geology may make it very hard to kill the well, even using
relief wells, and he says that we may never be
able to kill it. He also said that there are uncorroborated reports
of additional leaks other than the main well, but that BP isn't sharing
enough information to be able to assess whether or not that there are
additional leaks. (Dr. Bea told me that BP is using a "cloak of
silence", and is refusing to even show the government videos of what the
seafloor looked like before the April explosion).
So instead of simply trying to cap an existing
well, it may be more accurate to think of this as trying to build a new
well - or at least trying to duck tape the old one - so that it has
enough integrity to be permanently stopped.
Update: Admiral Thad Allen just confirmed in a press briefing some of what I wrote above:
At 1:30 in: Collapse of formation surrounding wellbore may be blocking bottom of annulus, not cement. …
At 3:15 in: We don’t know what is blocking annulus… Might not take
much to move whatever is blocking bottom, therefore risking direct
communication between reservoir and surface.
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Seconded
GW, you ought to be commented for your relentless pursuit of the truth in this very important story.
GW - Thanks to you and ZH for keeping this BP issue alive.
Today's AP story of "The Plume"
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Major-study-charts-apf-2439191540.html?x=0...
and the current cover of Mother Jones "The BP Cover-Up" are validating your
continuing efforts, ZH junks notwithstanding.