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"Top Kill" Has Failed
Here's the scoop: BP's attempt to stop the oil spill using the "Top
Kill" method has failed.
How do I know?
Well, as the New
York Times notes:
BP
officials, who along with government officials created the impression
early in the day that the strategy was working, disclosed later that
they had stopped pumping the night before when engineers saw that too
much of the drilling fluid was escaping along with the oil.
Indeed,
BP stopped pumping "mud" for more than
16
hours (the material gushing out of the leaking riser didn't
stop during that time).
Virtually all of the oil industry
technical experts - many of them working in the oil industry - at the Oil Drum agree that it is failed.
Basically,
BP has failed in trying to drive enough "mud" down the well to provide
enough weight to tamp down the oil gushing out. It didn't work.
Oh,
BP and the mainstream media may not admit
it for a couple of days. But it has failed.
Indeed,
BP's "re-starting" Top Kill really means that Top Kill Version 1.0 was
tried and failed, and now BP will try Top Kill Version 2.0 - which will
include adding "junk" to the mix.
Unless BP can get very lucky and plug the holes with
miscellaneous junk, Top Kill 2.0 won't be any more effective than Operation
Sombrero.
As the Guardian explains:
Doug
Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, insisted that the operation was
going to plan, but admitted: "What we do know is that we have not yet
stopped the flow."
He said BP engineers would soon use additional materials to try to plug
the well, suggesting heavy mud deployed so far would not work on its
own.
And the Guardian's oil spill blog (a great
resource which I just discovered) notes:
6pm CDT: Doug
Suttles makes an appearance on CNN ....
Asked by CNN what
had happened, Suttles said: "Too much of the mud is exiting the riser
as opposed to going down the well bore." This could be fixed in several
ways, including the infamous "junk shot", using a more viscous mud
type, or finally restarting pumping at very high rates.
***
7.30pm
CDT: The Washington
Post has more details on BP's stop-start top kill process, and
mentions that BP is considering a "junk shot" tonight:Doug
Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said that on Wednesday the
company had blasted high-pressure mud into the leaking well two times,
trying to force the oil down in a procedure compared to using one
firehose against another.
After doing it twice, Suttles said, the
company stopped about midnight Wednesday, and spent Thursday assessing
the plumes still shooting out of broken machinery. He said that company
officials believed the two efforts had probably made some progress.
"I
think some people believe it has. Some people believe it's less
obvious it has," Suttles said. "What we do believe we've done is
successfully pumped some mud, some of this drilling mud, into this
wellbore."
But, Suttles said, oil was still coming out, despite
these efforts: "What we do know is that we have not yet stopped the
flow."
He said the company would try the procedure again Thursday
evening and might add chunkier debris
such as rubber balls to the mix in hopes of clogging the leaking pipe.
That procedure is known as a "junk shot."
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I gave phase 1 of the top kill zero chance of success. When you take a well control class, the first thing they tell you is if a well kicks, get pipe to the bottom of the hole right away. Killing a flowing well from the surface is nearly impossible. The mud would have to be pumped in faster than it was flowing out, and I would not want to see the pressures required to do that. The junk shot should work if the leak is smaller than the diameter of a golf ball. A pack of golf balls should reduce the flow considerably. Mix in shards of tires, and it could plug most of the flow off. If, after the junk shot, you see a bunch of Titleists coming ashore in Grand Isle, use bigger diameter balls. I don't know why they didn't do that a month ago. It is risky because you can get a pressure spike that could rupture the wellhead. Other web sites said that this procedure won't be complete until Tuesday, so I think it's premature to say it failed.
I have to say that I'm at a disadvantage trying to figure out what is going on there. I'm in Yemen without much bandwidth or time. I've drilled over 100 wells, but none were offshore and none were this deep. And it's a long time since I did any drilling.
I've recently read that the gas flow that initially burned down the rig came out of the inside of the drill pipe. I don't know what they were doing, but it seems as though the casing was cemented in and they were using the drill pipe to set a shallower plug to temporarily plug the well. The casing cement job seems to have been leaking and no one noticed it was leaking. This would point to BP human error, although I have about 1% of the information I need to make this statement. It also seems as though BP did not run a sonic log (similar to an ultrasound) to measure the effectiveness of the cement job, something that I did 100% of the time. A pressure test was done instead, and it seems as though the results were being debated. All this points to BP reponsibility. The blowout preventers didn't close all the way, and this is a Transocean problem. But maybe they didn't close all the way because the rig had a list from the fire and threw it out of kilter. But, like I said, I'm just guessing.
CEO could you post more frequently ? good to hear from somebody in the business as well.
The thing that gets me is the idea of a "junk shot." First it was a concrete dome, now its a bunch of "junk." These all sound like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. I don't know anything about science, but I would imagine there has got to be something more sensible. Even CNN reported something about a nuke to close the hole.
If these are the plans/ideas that are seeing the light of day, what are the plans that have been rejected? Rube Goldberg would be proud.
Rubber baby bunker busters. Rubber baby bunker busters. I want to see it, America wants to see it, the Pentagon wants to test something, and probably BP wants to see it, since any epic fail cock-up with then fall solely on the military and USG.
Am I the only one who hears "junk shot" and thinks of American's Funniest Home Videos?
According to the Matt Simmons interview yesterday, the problem is they do not have any O-ring seals in the casing, remember the seals disintegrated and were ejected out of the well just hours before the well blew (one of the first warning signs of trouble).
To compensate for this problem, the lead engineer that gave the BP briefing late yesterday afternoon said they plan to inject the ground up rubber tires into the hole first then the mud behind it and see if that works.
If Michael moore loves his country he should volunteer to plug the hole.
Or, you could just put your purty little lips over it.
Uh-Oh
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated the June 1-November 30 season was likely to bring 14-23 named storms, with eight to 14 strengthening to hurricanes. “If the 2010 activity reaches the upper end of our predicted ranges, it will be one of the most active seasons on record,” it said.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/33e685ac-6a45-11df-b268-00144feab49a.html
If we just sit down and try to reason with the oil - maybe we can come to terms.
Or perhaps we can simply buy the oil off, or offer it a cabinet position or something.
Maybe we drill the hole deeper right through the planet to the other side - then it's China's problem.
Oil whisperer?
Place a ribbed liner plate around effected area to prevent oil migration into soil.Then place a perforated armor plate with a series of offset cables to create a guide column.Then run 1 ton burlap bags of cement down on slings and cable runners...etc.Dress a few B.P. executives in burlap and add to the mix.They might as well be usefull...
The latest plan is just to let the leak go and oil float to the surface. The idea is that individuals can get out there in their private boats and collect the oil themselves and get a 50% discount off the price per barrel from BP. Perhaps this will set a precedent.
As of 8:50 est there saying it's successful? sure hope so http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37394541/ns/gulf_oil_spill
Biblical proportion indeed, and then some. lets all hope.....
I hope Admiral Allen is right. I look forward to the scientific basis underlying his claim.
Unfortunately, his statement is a direct contradiction to the comments of the BP lead engineer at the press briefing late yesterday afternoon, who clearly stated the initial attempt of 15,000 barrels of mud failed, had no effect, and they would try the junk shot technique next and have an additional 50,000 barrels of mud on site for the next attempt.
This is a totally unmitigated disaster. If anyone doubts that it's getting biblical, now NOAA is saying it's going to be a very active hurricane season. There's going to be oil fucking everywhere!! If they don't get this thing under wraps, it's going to be on the shoreline of the UK within months. Tie this in with Iceland's president saying Mt Katla's eruption is imminent and you see how it'll be an oily black swan clothed in volcanic ash.
If you haven't secured food supplies for at least a year yet, what are you waiting for, somebody to stuff tiger woods in the pipe??
Well, in case you missed it,
GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has declared a state of emergency after a powerful eruption at the southern Pacaya volcano killed one person and forced the international airport to close.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hVfsfnDZBzkYw1QhgRYf47ZNu2Lw
...and the US ARMY declares Defcon 2.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hVfsfnDZBzkYw1QhgRYf47ZNu2Lw
What happens if hot pyroclastic material from Guatemala volcano reaches all that oil in the Gulf?
- looks like the oil may reach the volcano first.
This is a totally unmitigated disaster. If anyone doubts that it's getting biblical, now NOAA is saying it's going to be a very active hurricane season. There's going to be oil fucking everywhere!! If they don't get this thing under wraps, it's going to be on the shoreline of the UK within months. Tie this in with Iceland's president saying Mt Katla's eruption is imminent and you see how it'll be an oily black swan clothed in volcanic ash.
If you haven't secured food supplies for at least a year yet, what are you waiting for?
Can the volcano ignite the oil.
Or even better just plug the hole with Tiger Woods.
Like Tiger would be satisfied staying in just the one hole.
there are indeed more than one for his pleasure (are there not ?). atleast the cnn feed seems to show that.
btw..somebody posted earlier that the metal casing itself loooks stretched and weak from the constant pressure ??
Send Fabrice Tourre down there pronto!
We can try clogging the hole with ABACUS offering circulars.
Alternatively we can send Taliban divers down there to blow themselves up.
The solution is obvious. Set off a nuke near Japan to conjure Godzilla.. Bet you he could swim over in under a week and then shit on the hole to plug it.
Thanks ... first laugh of the day.
Sounds good. One of my old girlfriends used to like sitting on the jets of the Jacuzzi. Never understood her fascination with that maneuver.
Has anyone heard the talk of blowing it up? I have been told they could set off a bomb close to the hole and it would cave in on itself. The person that told me this claims Russia has used this many times and it works.
I'm skeptical myself and this person didn't tell me where he got the information. Seems to me if this was an alternative they would do it. Seems a bit far fetched to me but I don't know anything about sealing leaking oil gushers a mile deep in the gulf.
He even said nuclear, which sounds really strange to me. I could imagine the damage to other rigs/wells/equipment in the area could be a possibility as well as blowing the hole even bigger.
Lot's of peaceful recreational uses for nuclear weapons in addition to sealing blowouts...
http://wonderful-russia.net/russian-science/peaceful-nuclear-explosions/
My understanding is the amount of air around the fissile material at the core of the bomb is not sufficient to sustain the chain reaction once detonation occurs "underwater"...so it wouldn't fuse the seabed together creating a giant "scab".
But I wouldn't know for sure, a little above my paygrade ;-)
Just passing along what I've read that I believe to be accurate...there are probably some nuclear physicist's who read ZH...maybe they could correct if I'm in error.
any plan with the word JUNK in it is already sketchy for me.
AP now reporting that BP "won't know" for 2 days.
Regards.
Two words: Super Glue.
What I don't understand is why BP keeps paying for it. They can jump the boat for 75 million$.
Why don't they do that?
Pay the 75$ mil., pack the bags, fuel up the jets and get back to the UK?
The $75 million dollar cap does not apply in the case of negligence.
in other words, they could have stopped this environmental nightmare within days of the rig exploding, except that they've been trying every conceivable other option - to ensure that they can still extract oil.
Can't they just use Euros to plug the hole?
Use Dick Cheney.
The Deregulator.
What a freakin' tragedy.
All of the brains in all of the worlds universities and laboratories, and they decide the best way to fix this is to shoot rubber balls in to it.
Earlier this week there was talk of puting a new blow out preventor on the pipe. Why did they not do that immediately? Too expensive?
The only solution is to drill another well to intercept the oil several meters under the seabed, and collect the oil. But it can take months, maybe almost a year. Until that, the whole Gulf will change color, it will become black.
Drill down half a kilometer, then set off a very small nuke.
That seals it off.
BTW: the Mexican gusher was cut off with a secondary well. But that was a 2,000 PSI well head.
This one measured out at 14,000 PSI due to the massive gas infusion. 14,000 PSI ??? They're damn near trying to cap a plasma cutter.
If anyone missed this from an earlier ZH post
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx8kMXufu3w
guess what? you got it more outrageous incompetence!
I've kind of given up on success and accountability -- now I just hope for a realistic version in the history books.
Which is to say, when the leak finally stops because the pressure drops and there's no more oil in the hole, I'd like to think that BP & Obama don't somehow get credit for "figuring out how to plug the hole."
I've grown accustomed to getting fk'd; it's the donkey punch at the end that I object to.
Long Titleist? Gonna take a LOT of golf balls.
PGA says there's 1,500,000,000 golf balls manufactured every year.
Dump all the old ones on DH ??? WTF not ?
Why can't they just use mirrors?
Combined with smoke they would be very effective, though, not as effective as their deployment to the financial sector.
How about clogging it with some of that money Ben keeps printing.......
Eureeka! Stuff the banking sector into the pipe - guaranteed to choke off signs of life from any gusher
+50.000 (barrels per day) !!