Where are all of the ideas?

[SeaCat]

I have been following the "Disaster in the Gulf" since it started. (Remember my thread about the lawsuit?) I have been listening to the comments being made by many people about the fact that it hasn't been capped yet and about the Oil Spill Clean Up Efforts. (I have even been reading news stories about vandalism being carried out against things like the Booms by unknown persons in such places like JacksonVille and Pensacola.)

There have been comments about how things aren't moving fast enough. How Obama isn't doing enough, how the government isn't taking over.

The one thing I haven't seen so far are any reasonable ideas to help fix the problems.

So where are all of the good ideas?

Cat

 

[Guest]

Well, there is at least one Facebook page that suggests stuffing Sarah Palin in the hole.

I dunno.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The good ideas cant get past the gatekeepers at BP, in the givernment, and the press. The good ideas likely make no sense to the gate-keepers, and die there.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Well, there is at least one Facebook page that suggests stuffing Sarah Palin in the hole.

I dunno.

She doesn't have enough substance to stick in the pipe.

I also heard someone suggest stuffing Ayn Rand books into the hole.

 

[TE999]

I have been following the "Disaster in the Gulf" since it started. (Remember my thread about the lawsuit?) I have been listening to the comments being made by many people about the fact that it hasn't been capped yet and about the Oil Spill Clean Up Efforts. (I have even been reading news stories about vandalism being carried out against things like the Booms by unknown persons in such places like JacksonVille and Pensacola.)

There have been comments about how things aren't moving fast enough. How Obama isn't doing enough, how the government isn't taking over.

The one thing I haven't seen so far are any reasonable ideas to help fix the problems.

So where are all of the good ideas?

Cat

The fact is that this is a problem that has no parallel...no previous experience to draw upon...it was a one in a million chance of failure and everyones' confidence was such that there was no 'Plan B'...the feds issued BP drilling permits and asked no questions about ' Wulll...if da well breaks way down dere, how ya gonna fix it? Huh? Huh?' so they're as culpable as BP.

The mechanism that was installed to cap the well in case of a blowout failed too when it's controls were destroyed in the blast and the crew that could have operated had it remained intact was killed.

The well head is a mile down in the water...only robot subs can reach it...the capping technology is being developed as we speak...it's going to get worse before it gets better and if Obeymes' only solution to the problem is to sue BP and have a congressional investigation he's up for an epic FAIL.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

As I understand it, BP was pretty much operating not just at the very edge of the technology, but quite a few steps beyond. Things were fine as long as they were fine, but no one had any idea of how to deal with a catastrophe at this depth.

So I suppose the short answer is, there are no new ideas because basically no one knows what to do.

They had one idea fail because the water they were pumping down there froze at that depth and pressure. That seems to me to be something they really should have predicted had they given it any forethought. Obviously they hadn't.

 

[Liar]

She doesn't have enough substance to stick in the pipe.

I also heard someone suggest stuffing Ayn Rand books into the hole.

Altas Plugged.



Sorry, couldn't help myself.

 

[Liar]

As I understand it, BP was pretty much operating not just at the very edge of the technology, but quite a few steps beyond. Things were fine as long as they were fine, but no one had any idea of how to deal with a catastrophe at this depth.

So I suppose the short answer is, there are no new ideas because basically no one knows what to do.

They had one idea fail because the water they were pumping down there froze at that depth and pressure. That seems to me to be something they really should have predicted had they given it any forethought. Obviously they hadn't.

What irks me with all this is that there was no anticipation of a clusterfuck. When doing cutting edge large scale operations, it's common sense and common practice to anticipate the worst case scenario, and then prepare for something twice as bad.

There should for instance have been a relief well on standby, like what is mandatory in Canada. And it's not really BP's fault for not demanding it.

 

[amicus]

CNN, you know, Ted Turner's (Jane Fonda's ex), used to be a News outlet; as I recall, the first 24 hour a day news channel on cable television.

Well, tonight, as of right now, opposite Fox's O'Reilly show, CNN is running a propaganda piece, "Toxic Towns, USA".

Go figure.

No, you don't have to, I will do it for you. The entire Media, Fox included, is hell bent on an anti Industrial binge to rid the nation of all basic industry, energy, chemical and mining. All in an environmental activist stance to support alternative, renewable, non polluting solar and wind energy technology which will never, by definition, generate enough energy to supply even ten percent of current demand.

My youngest daughter called late last night: "Dad, what are we gonna do about the oil in the Gult?"

My answer to her, in brief was, "Nothing..."

I told her with all containment efforts underway, the environmental damage will be minimal, the 'water column' in the ocean itself will cure itself by itself as it always have, even with the nearly 3,000 cargo ships sank by the Germans in WW2, many of them in the Gulf of Mexico.

The well will be capped, sooner or later, or it won't. Either way, the current pressure of the outflow will diminish naturally as the underground pressure is relieved.

So, to respond to Seacat's plea of what to do...nothing...is the appropriate answer. Insofar as the chances of it happening again to any of the thousands of offshore drilling rigs, the industry certainly does not want a repeat performance and this will be a learning example of how to proceed in deep water drilling efforts.

Chill out folks....papa is here to quiet your fears.

Amicus

 

[SeaCat]

Now I'm not an engineer by any stretch and I don't claim to be one. That being said I am the son of an Engineer and had it beaten into me as I grew up that if I was going to complain about something then I should have some ideas on how to cure the problem. Hence my not making a lot of comments about the situation and not complaining about the methods tried so far.

I can think of several things I would do, and I'm not sure they haven't been started already. (Bringing in manned submersibles and possibly clearing the area around the well head. And yes there are several manned submersibles that can dive to that depth.)

Clearing the area around the well head would give them room to work. Manned Submersibles would give them a bit more versatility. (Arguments against this are the danger to the crews of the manned submersible.)

Unfortunately this is too deep for such things like J.I.M. Suits.

As for capping the leak, I have absolutely no idea on how that can be done.

Cat

 

[jomar]

As I understand it, BP was pretty much operating not just at the very edge of the technology, but quite a few steps beyond. Things were fine as long as they were fine, but no one had any idea of how to deal with a catastrophe at this depth.

So I suppose the short answer is, there are no new ideas because basically no one knows what to do.

They had one idea fail because the water they were pumping down there froze at that depth and pressure. That seems to me to be something they really should have predicted had they given it any forethought. Obviously they hadn't.

Hey, nobody's perfect! At Three Mile Island it took awhile before an engineer finally realized that water will eventually boil despite the pressure it's under, the boiling point just raises.

 

[Guest]

Altas Plugged.



Sorry, couldn't help myself.

 

[Xelebes]

Altas Plugged.



Sorry, couldn't help myself.

Hey, at least the book makes more sense now.

 

[jomar]

Ami, I am torn between smiling at your baiting and shaking my fist in outrage. Well done!

But Prince William Sound really hasn't recovered after all this time and the Valdez is gonna be a drop in the barrel compared to this one.

 

[amicus]

Ami, I am torn between smiling at your baiting and shaking my fist in outrage. Well done!

But Prince William Sound really hasn't recovered after all this time and the Valdez is gonna be a drop in the barrel compared to this one.[/QUOTE]

~~~

Hello jomar, I will take the above as faint praise just because it is 'hump day' Wednesday, middle of the week....

I am only slightly amused by your reference to the Exxon Valdez accident/incident, especially when now, twenty years later, some of the compensation issues are still in the Courts.

Less amused by others referencing Three Mile Island, which effectively destroyed the Nuclear Energy Industry and the realization that the anti industry Obama-ites are already attempting to criminalize and destroy the oil industry.

I almost hope they do...and when the country goes dark...well...I most likely won't be around to say, "It told you so!", but I have hopes that someone, maybe someone reading my remarks, will be around to do so.

I watched a documentary about 'Spindle Top' the Texas oil field that changed the entire industry in several ways...one of which was the innovation of using, 'mud' to facilitate drilling through sand to reach the oil bearing area. They herded cattle into a pond and used the mud stirred up, which is where the currently used material got its name.

The history and development of both the Oil and Coal industries that turned night into day and brought the world into the modern era is an amazing journey of exploration, risk,courage and innovation on all levels and I feel as if this generation surely just does not know or appreciate the past and what their forefathers achieved.

It is not my fault that ignorance reigns and what little I can do to dispell the darkness is my gift to those before me.

Amicus

 

[xssve]

Turn the fucking dome thingy upside down and fill it with concrete, and do it now.

Oil coming out at pressure like that is going to cut erosion grooves, and eventually, it's going to be uncappable - any plumber knows this.

 

[jomar]

Ami, I am torn between smiling at your baiting and shaking my fist in outrage. Well done!

But Prince William Sound really hasn't recovered after all this time and the Valdez is gonna be a drop in the barrel compared to this one.[/QUOTE]

~~~

Hello jomar, I will take the above as faint praise just because it is 'hump day' Wednesday, middle of the week....

Hump day suits Lit, eh. Not faint praise, a master at work.

I am only slightly amused by your reference to the Exxon Valdez accident/incident, especially when now, twenty years later, some of the compensation issues are still in the Courts.

That would be one of the points, that after all this time Exxon has yet to compensate those injured. BP has a model to follow.

Less amused by others referencing Three Mile Island, which effectively destroyed the Nuclear Energy Industry and the realization that the anti industry Obama-ites are already attempting to criminalize and destroy the oil industry.

On paper, everything works. It's when people and profit motive and deadlines override safety and quality that problems happen - along all productions lines.

I think the ban on drilling is a knee-jerk political decision. Obama should make different choices.

...

I watched a documentary about 'Spindle Top' the Texas oil field that changed the entire industry in several ways...one of which was the innovation of using, 'mud' to facilitate drilling through sand to reach the oil bearing area. They herded cattle into a pond and used the mud stirred up, which is where the currently used material got its name.

The history and development of both the Oil and Coal industries that turned night into day and brought the world into the modern era is an amazing journey of exploration, risk,courage and innovation on all levels and I feel as if this generation surely just does not know or appreciate the past and what their forefathers achieved.

I'm all for innovation.

The methods they've used thus far work on land and to about 200 feet depth. With innovation to plumb the depths of the ocean a mile deep to draw out oil it would seem to me it would be smart to at least include a team that says, "What if...and if...and if...given these conditions...and what the hell can we do about it." Not sexy, though.

Plus an operational law exists within the psyche that says the less something happens the less likely is it to happen so we pay less attention to it until it inevitably happens.

And a small oil field in Texas is a far cry from what is happening now.

It is not my fault that ignorance reigns and what little I can do to dispell the darkness is my gift to those before me.

Amicus

Love it.

 

[Guest]

It is not my fault that ignorance reigns and what little I can do to dispell the darkness is my gift to those before me.

Amicus

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj64/TanyaMSmith/pompous-1.jpg

 

[SeaCat]

Hokay folks,

The Valdez and this situation are completely different.

Just as T.M.I. and Chernoble were two entirely different situations.

I am not questioning that this will have ecological repercusions, we all know it will both in the short as well as the long term.

What I am commenting on is the commentary and the accusations. The chest beating and hair pulling and the lack of answers.

This is all Obama's Fault because he's the President. This is all B.P.'s Fault, this is all Joe Blows fault because he was thinking about finger fucking your sister when he should have been watching his dials and guages. Fine, let's point fingers after we cap this sucker.

We have all seen and heard the finger pointing and the commentary. We have all heard the people saying that B.P. and the government should have fixed this already. So where are the ideas on how to fix it? Arm Chair strategists and politicians aside we have plenty of Engineers in thsi country and although we are going down the tubes due to our outsourcing we still have plenty of resources. Where are they?

Now like I said above I'm no engineer and I certainly am not a deep sea engineer but it seems to me the first thing to do in ths case would be to get in all of the resources available. Once this is done get a plan into action.

Step one os to clear the decks so to say. Cut away the debris. This allows you to get at the source of the problem. (Not to mention it cuts down the source of the leaks from several to one.) Now you can attack the problem directly.

How to cut away the debri? There are many unmanned submersibles available aas well as manned submersibles. They can be shipped in. (As I said above manned submersibles do have the added risk of putting people in danger.)

Now as for capping the well, once you have cut away the pipes, the stringers as they call them then you have a much easier job. You only have one target. AS for capping or containing this single target I have no idea as I'm not an engineer with experience in deep water work. I don't know if anyone has experience in this kind of work. It hasn't happened before.

As for Obama. He's working under the same handicap any president would be. He's not a deep water Engineer and he has to rely on those very few who are. (Much like Bush was not a Mass Emergency Manager during Katrina.) He's doing what he can with the information and material he has at his command.

Cat

 

[amicus]

Heard on a News Broadcast, from an Oil Engineer, that there are over 5,000 wells drilled in the Gulf without a single incident. Also heard that there are 2400 deep water wells, at or deeper than the one that exploded, and not a single one of the 2400 ever had a blow-out.

Not that this is pertinent to the current crisis, but it should provide some perspective on the industry as a whole...almost always a safe operation.

May cooler heads prevail.

Amicus

 

[Loring2]

Seacat ...You should ...

be appointed as "Minister of Common Sense" ... at least for a short while in this Obama, BP political oil spill; during which opinions are much like anuses in that everybody has one and also unlike anuses because nobody has two of those.

Looking at this from my point of view it seems that BP was and is using equipment and technology that works just fine on dry land and shallow water and nobody has ever tried to use it at these depths before.

No other company has drilled at this depth. Correct me if I'm wrong.

So why did BP do this? Well ladies and gentlemen, BP didn't become the 4th largest company in the world by playing it safe and they're not playing it safe now. They have a CEO with the savoir faire of Attila the Hun but he knows what to do in the oil business and that's what he does. He is not your friend or mine and doesn't care.

Just remember, "Shit Happens" and what happened to Apollo 13 or am I wrong about that?

Loring

 

[Loring2]

Right you are Ami

Heard on a News Broadcast, from an Oil Engineer, that there are over 5,000 wells drilled in the Gulf without a single incident. Also heard that there are 2400 deep water wells, at or deeper than the one that exploded, and not a single one of the 2400 ever had a blow-out.

Not that this is pertinent to the current crisis, but it should provide some perspective on the industry as a whole...almost always a safe operation.

May cooler heads prevail.

Amicus

....but this one is at over 5000 feet and the problems are different because of pressure, I am told. I talked to a few guys (engineers) in NO this evening who are in the business and they don't have any better ideas than those used. They told me that this was "off the shelf", their phrase for where it was.

You're right about the cooler heads though .... much too political but I don't give a damn anymore. Stupidity is becoming dominant.

 

[DeeZire]

...So where are the ideas on how to fix it? Arm Chair strategists and politicians aside we have plenty of Engineers in thsi country and although we are going down the tubes due to our outsourcing we still have plenty of resources. Where are they?.

Last week, the Obama bunch assembled a team of scientists and others, including James Cameron, the director of Titanic, who has extensive knowledge of undersea robotics after doing the underwater shooting for the movie. So they are, at least, trying to think outside the box. The problem is, the only ones with access to the undersea robots are the drilling companies, so whatever new technology the Obama team wants to come up with will either have to be built from scratch, or cobbled together using the existing technology that's owned by the oil companies.

My understanding is that capping the well is no longer an option, because they're worried about the integrity of the well casing. If the well is capped and the pressure pushes the oil outside of the well casing below the sea floor, there would no way to contain it. Their only hope is to cut the riser and install a new one going up to the surface to capture the oil, at least until the relief well is finished.

I was not surprised when the saw they were using to cut the riser got stuck today. Anyone who has cut a metal pipe knows that it's going to bind if the pipe moves. If I was running the show, I would have cut the pipe the way lumberjacks cut down trees - by taking out wedges, rather than making one cut. When you take out wedges, the chance of the blade binding are greatly reduced.

Over at Red State dot org (or whatever it's called) there was a very knowledgeable thread with oil drillers like TX Rad explaining what went wrong. There was also an email link to some engineer dude who's hooked into the process, looking for suggestions on what to do next. I actually went back and tried to find the email link so I could submit my idea, but I couldn't find it. (No matter, since my idea was half-baked and probably wouldn't have worked anyway.)

On the issue of "shit happens" the shit that happened on the Deepwater Horizon was the BP manager ignoring the advice of the drilling crew and demanding they proceed, even though the drillers knew it wasn't safe. In this light, it wasn't a "one in a million" accident, it was negligence inspired by corporate greed. How negligence inspired by corporate greed ends up being Obama's fault is a mystery to me.

ETA: Here's a link to a NY Times article about proposed solutions, including the nuclear option.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03nuke.html

The atomic option is perhaps the wildest among a flood of ideas proposed by bloggers, scientists and other creative types who have deluged government agencies and BP, the company that drilled the well, with phone calls and e-mail messages. The Unified Command overseeing the Deepwater Horizon disaster features a “suggestions” button on its official Web site and more than 7,800 people have already responded, according to the site.

Among the suggestions: lowering giant plastic pillows to the seafloor and filling them with oil, dropping a huge block of concrete to squeeze off the flow and using magnetic clamps to attach pipes that would siphon off the leaking oil.

Some have also suggested conventional explosives, claiming that oil prospectors on land have used such blasts to put out fires and seal boreholes. But oil engineers say that dynamite or other conventional explosives risk destroying the wellhead so that the flow could never be plugged from the top.

Along with the kibbitzers, the government has also brought in experts from around the world — including scores of scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and other government labs — to assist in the effort to cap the well.

 

[amicus]

I went searching for the number of oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico and found sparse information suggesting just over 3500 as a working number.

This is a wiki site so buyer beware...Deep Water Horizon is not even listed:

Deepest oil platforms
The world's deepest oil platform is the floating Independence Hub which is a semi-submersible platform in the Gulf of Mexico in a water depth of 2,414 metres (7,920 ft).
Non-floating compliant towers and fixed platforms:
• Petronius Platform, 531 m (1,742 ft)
• Baldpate Platform, 502 m (1,647 ft)
• Bullwinkle Platform, 413 m (1,355 ft)
• Pompano Platform, 393 m (1,289 ft)
• Benguela-Belize Lobito-Tomboco Platform, 390 m (1,280 ft)
• Tombua Landana Platform, 366 m (1,201 ft)
• Harmony Platform, 366 m (1,201 ft)
• Troll A Platform, 303 m (994 ft)
• Gulfaks C Platform, 217 m (712 ft)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_platform#Deepest_oil_platforms

The below if you click on 'history', an interesting read:

In 2001, Petrobras 36 in Brazil exploded and sank five days later, killing 11 people.

This is another interesting link…drilling down to 30,000 feet….

http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/magazine/15-09/mf_jackrig

~~~

Amicus

 

[DeeZire]

...
How to cut away the debri? There are many unmanned submersibles available as well as manned submersibles. They can be shipped in. (As I said above manned submersibles do have the added risk of putting people in danger.).

Manned submersibles can't go a mile deep, at least not without imploding. There aren't many unmanned submersibles in existence with a crush depth rating of 5,000 feet.