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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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My Man!!!
What is with these clowns? Why not have a wedge-shaped object that you force into the hole with spines that prevents it from coming out? Or vice-grip the pipe until it stops piping, or build the blowout preventer so you can insert fun things manually into it. Surely golf balls are about the only idea destined to fail horribly.
Damn, I've become a cynical childlike ZH commenter. Oh well.
They thought of golfballs because the CEO's were having lunch and later playing golf when the explosion occured. It is natural for CEO's to think in terms of their customary pursuits.
Just dump the debris from the detroit teardown off a barge on top of it..
stop using bp stations, you may got a golf ball in your tank soon....
wanna see panic selling today. we should have these strikes in greece more often. well the french have had some riots but not much will be achieved with baguette against police baton
Sir, apart from your obsession of inserting strange stuff into holes, you are too qualified for the BP oil-spill-prevention team.
I"m very curious why Mr. Washington takes such great delight in reporting every failure to cap this well. He is just vibrating with glee. I see Tyler has pulled that phony report by Matt Simmons of a second leak. We know Simmons is up to his eyeballs in alternative energy, I wonder what Mr. Washington's angle is.
A bicycle, Washington, you need a bicycle.
Mr. Vail, I report failures with stopping the oil leak for the exact same reason I report failures in fixing the financial system.
If those in charge are trying stupid ideas which will make things worse and trying to cover up the fact that they are stupid ideas which are not working and which cannot work, it is my patriotic duty to report ... so that better ideas which might work can be tried.
Understand?
oh wank
Ouch. So, some douche in the Whitehouse jumped the gun with the leak to the LA times eh?
Short Obama's political capital.