The solution is to reduce oil use dramatically, which in an economic system based on growth, high energy gain, interconnected systems, high expectations, and increasingly funded via credit from thin air, means reducing all consumption dramatically and allocating 5-10% of our assets immediately towards non business as usual energy descent trajectories focused on basic goods and services.

Oh - you meant for the short term solution for the ongoing oil leak? On that I have no idea...

I'm not sure the caisson didn't work, at least not in the way BP wanted it to. What if their plan was to siphon off the oil from the box to pay for the spill, and when the hydrates formed it blocked that possibility? And now they are stalling for time to try to make it work somehow with hot water, or whatever?

Keep in mind that box weighs nearly 200,000 pounds, and at 5,000 feet of depth the weight of the water on top would be tremendous. Would the oil coming out and hydrates really be able to create that much bouyancy to lift it off?

I'm not saying that's what happened, but is it a possibility?

"Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove." -- P.G. Wodehouse

I'm not sure if you are serious on this or not, but it's Sunday and I'm into the Johny Walker Red, so here goes.

1. It's never been done under 5 feet of water, let alone 5000.

2. The molten metal would shock heat the BOP. (Ever see that second Terminator movie?)

3. The metal of the BOP would lose significant strength due to the heating and would likely fail due to simple softening.

4. You'd need one hella mold to put around the BOP, which is spewing hydrocarbons at a prodigious rate.

5. If you thought the pressures of the water & hydrocarbons were bad now, contemplate what happens when they are superheated.

I had an old boss once show me a burn he got while casting lead bullets. There was a sheen of moisture in the mold, and half the lead came back out after him.

The problem here is that the BOP appears to be acting as a flow restricter, and damaging it has a good chance of making things Very. Much. Worse. If you prowl this and other TOD threads, you'll see that there are many other more practical ideas to stop this that are in the queue.

Won't work Tin Foil Hat. The molten metal idea can be tried out in a pressurized tank with some near-freezing water and an injection system... See if you can create a prototype where your molten metal doesn't solidify too soon. Allow time enough to move the metal 5000 feet slowly, a few hours, making sure it passes through some near-freezing water for hours. Standing outside your tank with some chopsticks poking through water-tight, flexible entry points, try to build a mold where you want your metal to fall.

Me, I am arguing here and elsewhere, it IS possible that DICK CHENEY'S HEAD is big enough to plug the main hole. Since is it worthless and should be used to solve this problem, let me be the first to offer this idea to the public, a deluded lot lied to 24/7 by the MSM and TPTB.

Honestly, it's no joke and no one here seems to be mentioning the criminal nature of this case. I favor of criminal prosecution of all parties responsible for this massive disaster--Including BP's upper management, even Mr. Scuttlebutt. All US officials involved in MMS team should be included, of course.

TOD should call for a Grand Jury Investigation. Put out a petition. NO accountability insures this will happen again. Why not demand accountability? Everyone toiling at the bottom knows how it works.

Between January and March of 2001, incoming Vice President Dick Cheney conducted secret meetings with over 100 oil industry officials allowing them to draft a wish list of industry demands to be implemented by the oil friendly administration. Cheney also used that time to re-staff the Minerals Management Service with oil industry toadies including a cabal of his Wyoming carbon cronies. In 2003, newly reconstituted Minerals Management Service genuflected to the oil cartel by recommending the removal of the proposed requirement for acoustic switches. The Minerals Management Service's 2003 study concluded that "acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly."

The acoustic trigger costs about $500,000.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/05-10

I know next-to-nothing about the actual workings of any oil rig... BUT I DO know about casting metal.

I realise that others will give you a better, more considered response and I gladly defer to them, but the idea of pouring some form of molten metal down 5,000 feet deep into the Gulf of Mexico is... breath-taking to say the least.

The present problem is caused by some methane clathrates (ice-like crystals) forming in the top of the chamber and clogging the pipe up.

OK, how cold do you think it has to be in order to cause this?

If you think about how difficult it is to keep molten metal molten (ie: liquid and pourable) then even trying to pour such down some sort of pipe that deep is going to present the most insurmountable of problems. I know from casting over many a year that getting metal to flow into those corners and "fiddly bits" is very difficult.

I have helped a friend try to cast a set of frames for a steam locomotive. He was using cast iron which is said to be 8 times MORE liquid that water (no, I don't know how that's measured) - and every time, when the thinner sections of casting were examined, they would be full of flaws - the metal simply did not run very well due to chilling. Heating the mould up didn't work very well, as the thermal mass of such was so great it was more work (heating) to warm the mould up than what it was to heat the metal up to pour it in.

So, you need an ENORMOUS amount of energy to get molten metal (presumably inside an insulated pipe) a little ways. It would take stupendous amounts of energy to get the metal to the floor of the Gulf of Mexico in a molten state (ie: fluid and pour-able), PLUS you cannot have any liquid in the immediate area. Molten steel is usually poured at above it's melting point. Given that the lowest melting point of steel is about 1200 C (2192 F), the pour temperature is probably just shy of 2,000 C (3632 F), to enable the steel to handle the chilling effect of the mould, spout and so forth.

So, this pipe has to transport a hot liquid at around 3,500 degrees F which is very VERY heavy (steel, when it melts, does not lose it's weight) and does not flow very well. Molten Cast Iron is very fluid. Molten Cast steel is not. So, this tube had to keep it's internals warm at over 3,500 F, plus keep it moving and support it's weight.

Assuming you can get a 5000 foot long tube that will handle the thermal stress of a temperature difference of the molten steel (3,500 F) as compared to the water of the Gulf of Mexico (cold enough to freeze out methane clathrates) and support the weight of such, while not allowing it to chill - wouldn't it just be a whole lot easier (and not to say FASTER) to warm the presently existing pipe mildly (say 20 C) to thaw the methane clathrates? And if they cannot do THAT (and it seems they cannot) how the heck are they gunna get molten steel to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico?

... and then you have the problem at the other end - the molten steel has to pour INTO something.

This introduces us to the biggest problem:

If you pour water onto a cooking-oil fire, as demonstrated by Mythbusters, you get a HUGE fire/ explosion. This is, in part, a steam explosion.

If you pour molten metal into any container which has water in it will ALSO cause a huge explosion. This is almost wholly a steam explosion. Water boils at around 100 degrees C or 212 degrees F. Water, when heated to it's boiling point, will expand 1,600 times upon converting to steam. Almost all molten metals have enough heat in them to convert water to superheated steam. Molten steel or molten cast iron are more than hot enough to flash water instantly to superheated steam. Brass might be a bit better, but steam is still superheated at brass's melting point (look it up). Yes, the water at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is at a somewhat greater pressure than the water at sea-level and that raises the boiling point but it will still boil given enough heating. 3500 F is more than enough heat.

OK, so you need to have some form of casing which excludes the water on the bottom of the gulf of Mexico - OR you'll get the mother of all superheated steam explosions, which will cause the water molecules to separate into oxygen and hydrogen (the hotter end of superheater fires do this). Thus you'll have a huge volume of quite explosive fuel (the oil and the gas belching out of the holes in the sub-oceanic oil field structure) PLUS some enormously hot source of ignition (the molten iron or steel) plus a goodly supply of oxygen PLUS an expanding gas (the superheated steam) propelling all of your delicate structure (Blow-Out Preventer and all) towards the orbit of Mars.

But how DO you exclude the water? If they could do that now, they'd have a large part of the problem solved - a water-tight container is certainly an oil tight one. And that's where we get back to the original problem. The problem is the containers are NOT oil-tight.

So, assuming you have a water-tight container around the Blow Out Preventer, would you not expect the Oil to fill it really quick? THEN you're going to pour molten steel into the container? What the heck are we making this container out of? There's no known material that would be able to do all of the things all at once (keep the water out, keep the Oil in, keep the steel molten) AND resist the resulting almost thermonuclear sized explosion that would inevitably follow when forcing molten steel into close contact with 5,000+ barrels of oil per day (or is it per hour?).

The cure is worse than the problem.

If you had such a container, it would be simpler to lower it down to the bottom of the Gulf, let the Oil fill it up, and then leave it alone. The pressures will equalize, and that's when the Oil stops leaking out of the Blow Out Preventer.

There is a company that re-lines old concrete and old cast metal piping with epoxy liner. A flexible sock is run down through the pipe and then air pressure is forced into the sock to force it down the length of the piping if I am not mistaken. Hardner is then pumped into the sock. They claim that th epoxy liner is more durable and stronger than the original piping. If a sock ( for lack of a better term could be made with a pre attached valve and a perforated section of sock where it would attach to the existing piping with a clamp mechanism. The sock would be pulled over the existing BOP and tightened at the base while oil still flowed through the sock. The chemical hardner would then be pumped into the sock while the valve remained open. The force of the escaping oil and NG would keep the sock balloned open. once cured it might just work. my two cents

I have a friend who's idea to stop the leak will work, I think. He built a protoype this morning, and it works great. Don't know who to pitch it to. It's quite simple, really.

ET -- Unless I missed it, these NG hydrates are the result of the escaping NG cooling to the freezing point as the pressure is reduced when it reaches the surface. These are not the hydrates folks talk about existing in the Deep Water areas. The freezing process is very common with all NG well. Producing NG wells have a "heater treater" at the well head that heats the NG and prevents the flow lines from freezing. We can make all the artificial NG hydrates we want but it would just be a conversion of existing NG.

Or they could just pump more. If they pump up more than is leaking from the pipe, it'll be seawater. This obviously is above freezing. Don't know by how much, but if they flush enough seawater alongside the oil and NG that should be enough to keep temperatures above freezing.

Other option could be to add electric heating. They reported a capacity of 15000 barels a day.
That's:
15000 barels/day × 159 L/barel = 2385000 L/day
4.18 kJ/L/K × 2385000 = 9969 MJ/day/K
9969 MJ/day/K / 86400 sec/day = 115 kW/K

That's obviously a worst-case scenario where I assume the specific heat of water which is on of the highest around. So 50 standard immersion heaters could provide a significant difference in this case!

I think the electric heating is cheaper than extra pumping. What's quicker to implement, I don't know.

I wonder if the problem is when the gas comes out of the well or whether it is the decreasing pressure as it goes up the pipe. In the case of the pipe they could also simply add a gass release valve. The gas will collect in the top of the dome because it's significantly ligther than oil and then add a gas release valve to the top of the dome and collect the oil just below the top. Should be easy.

drwater:

The pipe was not yet installed when the clogging was discovered and the testing suspended.

Their first deployment attempt failed. But I'm sure they will try again once the have decided what they want to do differently in their next try. And that might also fail. I hope they do get much more egg-on-the-face before they finally succeed.

I don't think that BP really thought the dome would work......but they felt they were obliged to try...

I posted this on yesterday's thread a few minutes ago.

This idea is probably feasible but would almost certainly take longer to put into place than drilling the relief wells.

1 - excavating the area is not a problem and could probably be done in a day or two, maybe a few hours. Standard tooling carried with these ROVs includes sizable jet and mud pumps as excavating around a work site is a common task.

It just occurred to me that the casing may be in the way and in that case - another good idea down the drain - but to continue.

2 - Welding can not be done at these depths and pressures with current technology and trying to develop that would take years.

3 - Casting offers its own set of problems and has no track record underwater. Attempting to perform it under a mile of water and over 2,000 psi of pressure present a lot of challenges.

Any container has to be (a) open to the ocean pressure, or (b) pressurized to resist the external pressure, or (c) strong enough to keep from collapsing. You will rarely find a container on a deep work ROV that is filled with air. All the electronic are contained in oil filled boxes with hydraulic bladders that allow them to be pressurized to the surrounding water pressure, etc.

Casting requires a lot of heat and so you have to figure out how to supply the heat and also insulate it from the surrounding water. Pretty much all standard insulations utilize air in their design and will collapse.

Take a 7" Styrofoam coffee cup down to 1,000 feet and you get back a 1.5" high, hard piece of white plastic - they make great souvenirs for customers and visitors.

You might be able to use the syntactic foam that is used for the large yellow flotation blocks you see on the ROVs as it won't collapse under 5,000 psi external pressure but it also is easily destroyed by heat.

4 - Mechanically sealed pipeline clamps, connectors and hot taps for deep water use are common and the designs for them are on the shelf. There are a few problems:

The existing tested and certified designs are pretty much in the 2,000 to 5,000 psi range and would have to be revised to accommodate much greater pressure, that would take several days. Then a prototype would have to be built which would probably take at least a month, the metal and materials used are not available at your local hardware store.

For safety the test unit has to be tested well above operating pressure, maybe to destruction, so it can't be reused.

After proof of the design an operating unit will have to be manufactured, another month.

Add to this all the time for approvals from BP, MMS, various engineering consultants, etc and then the time to transport and install I think it would arrive substantially later than a relief well.

The last sizable project I lead was a couple years ago and was very similar in many ways. It was the design, test and manufacture of a pipeline connection system for 18 inch pipeline to be used in 5,000 feet of water. The operating pressure was 2,000 psi. The entire onshore portion of the project took about 9 months including the testing which alone was 14 straight days at 12 hours a day with about 12 to 15 people plus the customer's personnel.

It is very difficult to explain to the average person the size, complexity and cost of deep water oilfield operations.

The issue is as you say in that post:

Our choices would appear to be letting the massive right wing corporate media continue to dither and spin, letting politicians piss away the time and resources we need to prepare for a lower energy world because none of them have the courage to say, “We can not do this any more.” Or one of us can say just that, and then we get on with the business of what happens next.

We can not do this any more. – Neal Rauhauser

This being said, what do we actually do about the problem?

We really do need to be figuring out what is really workable on a low-energy basis on a long term basis--you mention 90 years in the post. We also need to figure out a way so that our priorities are changed so that what little capital we have is spent in that way.

It seems to me that additions that just add to the comfort of today's people, or even just preserve some of today's comforts for the lifetime a product with a 30 year lifetime, are not all that helpful (like solar PV panels on homes, if they last for 30 years)--they absorb capital, and but over a 90 year or longer term, the payback may be nil. We need to get to figure out what we can really keep up for 90 years or more--preferably more, and work on those things, even if it means doing without other things that seem better.

The difficulty is trying to figure out which ones are really feasible for the long term. I know you, Neal, are working on stranded wind. If that can be made so it is really repairable within an overall system we can maintain, it would seem to be a possibility.

Another possibility might be repairable small wind (perhaps for water pumping, or for small factories). It may be we need to try different approaches, and see what can be made to work.

The trick is (1) to get the new items to be repairable within the overall system we can maintain, and (2) to make them operate with energy that really is available locally, over the long term.

Well Heisenberg, the answer is uncertain.

The Perdido Spar would more properly be labeled a production facility but it does have drilling capability. It will be anchored in deeper water than any other production facility so that's its claim to fame.

There have been numerous wells drilled in deeper water and some of them are producing, others waiting for production facilities.

Perdido's wells are actually fairly shallow, about 6,000 feet of actual drilling depth, for deep water wells.

Are there issues - always.

Petrobras (Tupi) is the leading oil company IMHO in deep water drilling expertise. They have had issues, the first pre-salt well cost $240 million to drill, now they claim they have them down to about $50 million each.

There is oil and gas left on OCS as there is onshore in the USA, both of which are being drilled extensively. The problem is that the wells get smaller and smaller as the good (cheap) prospects are played out.

Heisenberg wrote:

Also, how much more OCS is there left to explore/exploit? Is there no more oil or NG found past the OCS in the abyssal plains?

Here's the MMS's guestimates of OCS resources: http://www.mms.gov/revaldiv/Maps/National.pdf

No oil on the abyssal plains.

Very little actual seafloor is more than 100 Million years old:
http://pangea.stanford.edu/~annegger/PDFs/geochron_11x17.pdf
True seafloor spreads from spreading centers like the mid-Atlantic ridge, as magma.

Mid ocean sedimentation rates are in the 2 to 3 centimeter per thousand years range,
so the sediment would only build up to 3000 meters max, barely within the oil window depthwise or timewise: http://oilandgasgeology.com

BUT, the deep oceans are fairly well oxygenated, so organics decay instead of hanging around. And no traps/permeable reservoirs due to the fine-grained, boring geology (all flat mudstone/shale, no folding).

The OCS and places like the Gulf of Mexico, pre-salt in Brazil, Arctic were all places that
were at times closed basins that went anoxic, preserving the massive algae or Azolla blooms that we use as oil today.

i think 'buoyancy' is not the issue here. as soon as the hydrates fill/block the opening the force of the outflow is lifting the cofferdam off of the pipe.

i'm sure that bp had 100 engineers saying, this cofferdam is not going to work. those are the ones who should be running this operation.

i'm not saying we should do nothing. i'm saying that we have to stop trusting bp's management when they foist unworkable solutions on us. another example of this is the dispersants, i don't trust bp when they tell use that human life will not be harmed by the dispersants. remember 3 days post 9/11, christie todd whitman and guiliani, saying 'the air is safe to breathe'? i'm worried for the health of recovery workers in the gulf.

lastly, no matter how much warm water you pump down there, the change in pressure as the gas escapes the leak is going to freeze up any contraption. (my non-engineer guesstimate)

I wonder how/where/when water pressure affects the math.

"Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul..."
- The Future,
Leonard Cohen

TinFoilHatGuy -

Whoa! Why on earth are you assuming a 1-foot wall thickness?

This thing is made out of steel sheeting, and I doubt it's much more than 1 inch thick, as it is in no way intended to serve as a super pressure vessel. It just has to be a sufficiently rigid box. So I think your calculation for the volume of steel is probably off by roughly a factor of 10. As such, the buoyant force resulting from the amount of water displaced by the steel is probably more like 20,000 lbs.

As a further check, consider that common carbon steel weighs about 480 lbs per cubic foot. If the caisson had a 1 -foot wall thickness it would weigh 480/64 x 198,400, or almost 1.5 million lbs, which is 750 tons, about 7 times more than it actually weighs.

The buoyant force is not really the issue. Besides they can always add more concrete to weight it down should that become a problem. The key problem now appears to be finding a way to keep methane hydrates from forming due to the cooling caused as the gas phase expands.

The effective weight underwater is the weight of the concrete on dry land minus the weight obtained by replacing the volume of the concrete with water. If the thing is 40*24*14 with a lid and 1 ft thick walls, I get around 3376 ft^3 of concrete. The density of concrete is about 150 lbs/ft^3 and density of water is 64 lbs/ft^3, so the weight underwater is

3376*(150-64)= 290000 lbs

The buoyant force is the inner volume times the density difference between oil and water:

13440*(64-55)= 160000 lbs

The weight of the beast underwater is still much more than the buoyant force if it is full of oil. But displace that with gas, and there could be a problem (the limiting amount depends on temp etc.). The wall thickness could also be way off.

Precisely, Bill. No need for an ignition source - this was done in Wood County, Texas with very heavy oil and ran for quite a while - suspended when oil prices fell, and was supported by a DOE grant. I do not have the details, but they should be out there.

No explosions, but the formation provided a seal. The cofferdam should do the same, with a measured amount of O2 titrated into the environment.

Not really the time to start experimenting, but the earlier experiences could provide the starting point for experimentation away from the site. We do seem to have several weeks at the very least, and setting this up should not take much time if it appears to be a temporary fix.

Do you know anything about casting?? First of all you got to get a water tight sealed with the mold around the BOP and the riser package coming in the bottom and out of the top, then you to evacuate all the seawater in that mold leaving a partial vacuum which means the mold has to hold against the outside pressure at 5000', then it has to be BONE DRY or you get steam bubbles which blow the mold apart, then you have to inject the melt which has to get to 5000' and still be molten, and recall the walls of the mold are at the temp of seawater at 5000' (about freezing) meaning the metal is going to set BEFORE it flows to all the areas, thus you have voids that are exposed to many tons of seawater pressure and it shatters. Even IF you got it to work using an insulated mold and a crucibile that stays hot at 5000' you still have a metal cylinder with a pipe going thru it. You haven't solved anything.

Are there actually GOM wells that produce 30,000 bpd, or are they talking about platforms that produce 30,000 bpd from numerous wells?

You know, you cannot help but think a Giant Pyramid of Giza dropped dead center on the problem would fix it. I thought of that the first day. It does seem like a workable solution.

That probably won't not work either. The surface is uneven. The concrete, despite its weight, does not change that fact.

Imagine a leak coming up from a piece of corrugated steel and saying that putting a concrete block will 'plug' the leak.

Won't work.

It IS possible that DICK CHENEY'S HEAD is big enough to plug the main hole. Since is it worthless and should be used to solve this problem, let me be the first to offer this idea to the public, a deluded lot lied to 24/7.

Honestly, it's no joke and no one here seems to be mentioning this rather outrageous OVERSIGHT, I'm in favor of CRIMINAL PROSECUTION of all parties responsible for this massive disaster--Including BP's upper management, even Mr. Scuttlebutt.

Between January and March of 2001, incoming Vice President Dick Cheney conducted secret meetings with over 100 oil industry officials allowing them to draft a wish list of industry demands to be implemented by the oil friendly administration. Cheney also used that time to re-staff the Minerals Management Service with oil industry toadies including a cabal of his Wyoming carbon cronies. In 2003, newly reconstituted Minerals Management Service genuflected to the oil cartel by recommending the removal of the proposed requirement for acoustic switches. The Minerals Management Service's 2003 study concluded that "acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly."

The acoustic trigger costs about $500,000.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/05-10

"This way they could keep drilling deep with a bell over the BOP. It's hard to say 'so long' to a $200 million dollar investment."

Besides the fact that it cant and wont happen, the $200M is chump change.

If BT could write a magic check for $3-4B or so and vanquish the issue they would do it today.

Copied from older thread:

Just posted this on yesterdays thread but can't remember if it has been discussed here - the notion that the damaged riser coming out of the BOP limits BP's options rather significantly:

Here is a picture of the top of the BOP stack:

http://twitpic.com/1m8f4c/full

(If anyone knows of a larger version how about a link?) You can see that the top of the stack has been tweaked and stressed with probably unknown consequences for the integrity of the BOP should BP decide to mess with it.

The following:

"Horizon37 says:

The choke and kill lines are out here is a side view, as you can see they are kinked shut. And the only other way into the stack is to remove the LMRP, which they can't do. Here is a link to the side view of the kinked and collapsed riser twitpic.com/1m8f4c as you can see it has the gimbal joint pulled over and there is not enough room to put on a saddle tap, even if one could be made to fit the egged riser."

was posted here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/uscgd8/4551846015/page5/

and the latest news I am aware of:

AP has a short update:

"A BP PLC official is saying that the company is considering more options to stop the flow of oil spewing at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Chief operating officer Doug Suttles said Sunday that BP is thinking about putting a smaller containment dome over the massive leak after a four-story, 100-ton box became clogged with icelike crystals a day earlier.

BP believes a smaller dome would be less vulnerable because it would contain less water.

The company is also now debating whether it should cut the riser pipe undersea and use larger piping to bring the gushing oil to a drill ship on the surface.

Suttles says cutting the pipe is tough, and considered the less desirable option."

I believe they (BP) discussed setting the box down 'hot' with the warm water circulating also, but it seems that there isn't an easy fix available.

Meanwhile I believe it is likely, though not certain, that the leaks are continuing to grow due to abrasion through the BOP and breaks in the riser.

The time-line now seems to be 'weeks' to implement any of the potential fixes contemplated for the leaking BOP stack and riser. I am sure that there is considerable nervousness that the leaking could accelerate - even to an open well situation - especially if the chosen method involves the BOP. Waiting for the relief wells to reach the main well to seal it may seem like a bad choice, but if something goes wrong with the repair efforts that leads to a complete failure of the BOP that would clearly be worse.

I asked on one of the earlier threads if it was possible to guess how effectively the BOP had functioned based on the pictures of the rig fire - did that look like a fire fueled by an open well or a partially sealed well? The implication would be how much of a role the crimp/bend in the riser, which occurred after the rig sank of course, was playing in restricting the flow of oil and gas. Perhaps it is not possible to know - and that would seem to be a real headache for those trying to consider the implications of messing with the BOP and cutting the riser...

"Information is the new opiate of the masses."
--resistanceisfeudal

Another idea for consideration--

The problem is that the methane hydrate "slurry" cannot flow fast enough from the caisson (aka contraption) through the restricted opening into the "drill string" (I'm not sure if this is still in place, but the "plan" was certainly to have one) or it just plugs it up.

Here's how to fix this--

1) fill the drill string from above by pumping down a say 50/50 mixture of seawater and methanol giving a specific gravity which makes the drill string "approximately" neutrally buoyant (maybe somewhat heavier).

2) Connect the drill string to the caisson where it is now located away from the leak.

3) Pump down more mixture from the surface until the existing gas hydrates trapped in the dome are dissolved by the methanol. Some gas will be released and start to bubble up through the drill string tube.

4) Fill two other drill strings (or preferably hoses), one with an acid, the other with a base, and bring the ends (tied together) to a location very near to the leaking pipe . Start pumping the acid and base SLOWLY down from the surface.

5) Using Crane, transfer the Caisson with connected drill string to point above spill and lower in place.

6) As oil fills up the caisson, crack open valve on top of drill string at surface ship.

7) Increase flow of acid and base through hoses to create heat from neutralization as they mix together and flow upward to mix with escaping oil. (Alternatively, just use more methanol).

8) Separate or distill out methanol from water at surface or transfer water phase to another vessel.

9) Open valve at the surface vessel slowly to wide-open position over several hour period to maintain flow stability.

10) Hope that the flow from the well doesn't increase over time.

The lead is not a bad conceptual idea, except one wouldn't want to open the casing. Maybe they could inject something very dense into a side valve on the BOP.

(This may have been discussed before, and if so, please point me to the appropriate link.)

If in a worst case scenario nothing works, how much oil is supposed to be under there if the well gushes until the pressure equalizes? If it just bleeds dry on its own until it finally stops, how may Exxon Valdez equivalents is it, or how much more oil than what has already spilled? Would it keep gushing for a year or several years or what? Would it be the end of the oceans globally?

Thanks.

Why can't they just attach a giant hose to where its leaking? Couple of huge hose clamps.

Getting tired of hearing this idea spammed over and over despite numerous objections from folks who know better.

Essentially what you're trying to do is to create a glob of molten metal about 1 meter in diameter, underwater, with the solidified outer wall of the metal in direct contact with water, right?

I did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation: if you start of with a 1 meter diameter ball of molten steel at its melting point and expose its outer surface to seawater, thermal conduction through the solid crust means that without an internal heat source, the whole thing will freeze solid in about 4 minutes. No way you could lower it from the surface fast enough.

If you heat it with some sort of electric furnace, to balance thermal conduction you need to provide something like 1-10 megawatts of heating, depending on the thickness of the outer crust.

Now, the BP folks have a lot of great tools on hand, but I doubt they have shipboard generators and cabling that will allow them to deliver enough power at depth to light an entire town -- to say nothing of the specialized underwater arc furnace you need, which isn't exactly an off-the-shelf item. Honestly, if they did have this sort of power and equipment, the methane clathrate clogging their oil dome wouldn't be an issue.

You're seriously underestimating how good water is at keeping things cool, and how fast heat conducts through metal. Melting metal underwater is like trying to cut copper pipe with a cigarette lighter.

Give it up.

The riser is bent throughout its entire length including just above the BOP. That is why I am currently floating a cast in place metal patch idea.

No way to attach it. The riser pipe is a piece of cooked spaghetti bending just above the BOP. Also you risk damaging the riser or BOP and increasing flow.

I think that right now the pressure differential between the wellhead and the riser exists across the BOP. Someone suggested a few days ago that a even a very tiny cross-sectional area of pass-through could account for all of the leakage. If the riser were crimped some of that pressure differential would simply be transferred to the new constriction, raising the velocity of the flow at that point to compensate (according to the continuity principle in laminar flow). I doubt if the riser pipe was made to withstand the same type of pressures as the BOP. However, it would amount to two flow constrictions instead of one, effectively doubling the resistance to the flow. It would not stop all of it, but half would be quite a victory, even if it proved temporary. Sounds like it might be a comparatively "easy" thing to attempt, with a good potential for payoff. Of course, nothing is easy at that depth.

What is the problem of accepting hydrate formation as unavoidable & uncontrollable? Let it form and design a recovery system that it won't clog. Or are hydrates too hazardous and must be avoided?

...sort of like herding cattle through a chute into a corral. Maybe a better idea than trying to force the slurry to flow through a 7" tube.

You would need a sidewall sticking 6' or so above the surface to enclose the "swimming pool" and to vaccum it out of the "corral" into awaiting vessels before it overflows.

You would also need to avoid sparks and pray the weather stays calm.

jmbutton
Not a bad idea, however the flexible tube would need to be much greater than 6 feet in diameter. The problem is that the density of the oil contained within the tube will be considerably less than the surrounding seawater. This induces two problems. The surface level of the inside of the tube will be much higher than the surrounding sealevel and there will be a net inward pressure on the tube at all levels. However if you increased the tube diameter to say 10 metres(30 feet) I imagine these effects could be brought down to a manageable level.

From Shelburn's superb analysis:

Factoid: If you assume that there is over 5,000 psi of downhole pressure at the BOP--and everything I have heard indicates it is probably substantially higher than that--then a 1/4 inch diameter hole is large enough to “leak” 5,000 barrels a day. That “leak” would probably cut off your arm if you passed it in front of it.

It sounds like the BOP cut-off vales activated, but not completely, so let's suppose the sand cut has now enlarged a ragged hole to something like 1 inch total cross section. Now imagine gaining access to the flow just below the BOP and flushing in a mix of shredded golf balls and tire rubber, making sure that the mix has both large and small chunks and some even smaller particles. Very quickly the various bits of junk, driven at 5000 PSI would wedge in the path, and smaller bits would flush into smaller holes, blocking them. Maybe it still seeps some, but at a lower rate the big dome wouldn't fill with hydrates, so it could be used.

This sounds doable.

I don't know if there is an easy* access port (Say a mud return) just below the BOP that could be cut, but drilling a hole also sounds possible.

*Nothing at 5000 feet is easy. Ever.

This has the advantage of leaving the BOP mostly intact so that after the relief wells are in, the BOP could be removed for analysis and a new one could be installed for final decommissioning of the hole.

It's in everyone's interest that there is a Challenger-style commission that looks into the BOP failure, otherwise it will be politically challenging to lease new offshore plots.

Or perhaps these attempts are really for show?

Or perhaps these attempts are really for show?

If it can't be collected from the center of the whirlpool, at least it could be burned more efficiently from that location--but I think it could be collected.

No, in fact an intelligent question.
But are you old enough to remember Torrey Canyon?

Directly from wikipedia:
On 18 March 1967, owing to a navigational error, the Torrey Canyon struck Pollard's Rock in the Seven Stones reef (almost exactly) between the Cornish mainland and the Scilly Isles. An inquiry in Liberia, where the ship was registered, found the captain, Pastrengo Rugiati, was to blame because he took a short cut to save time in getting to Milford Haven.

This was the first major oil spill; a fairly adequate outline of how to deal with a coastal oil spill had been issued to local authorities some years previously but had apparently been forgotten, so it was widely reported that no plans had been prepared beforehand to deal with it. The tanker had to be ready to deliver its cargo to anywhere in the world, and so only had small-scale charts; she used LORAN but not the more accurate Decca Navigator. When the risk of collision with a fishing fleet became obvious, there was some confusion between the Master and the helmsman (who was actually the cook and had little experience) as to whether she was in manual or automatic steering mode; by the time this was resolved, it was too late. Unsuccessful attempts were made to float the ship off the reef, and one member of the Dutch salvage team (Captain Stal) was killed.

Detergent was used by Royal Navy vessels to try and disperse the oil. However, the ship had started to break up and UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his cabinet held a mini cabinet meeting at Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose and decided to set fire to the remaining oil to avoid the oil disaster getting worse. On Tuesday 28th March 1967 the Fleet Air Arm sent Blackburn Buccaneer planes from Lossiemouth to drop forty-two 1,000lb bombs on the ship. Then the Royal Air Force sent Hawker Hunter jets to drop cans of aviation fuel to make the oil blaze. However, exceptionally high tides had put the blaze out and it took further attacks by Sea Vixens from the Naval Air Station at Yeovilton and Buccaneers from the Naval Air Station at Brawdy as well as more RAF Hunters with napalm to ignite the oil. Attempts to use foam booms to contain the oil were of limited success due to their fragility in high seas.

The UK government was strongly criticised for its handling of the incident, which was at that time the costliest shipping disaster ever. The RAF and the Royal Navy also came in for ridicule, as, of 42 of their bombs dropped on the stationary target, 25% missed their target.

And therefore the joke: "I say Prangworthy, remember the railway marshalling yards at Hamm?"

Marie -- Each reservoir has a unique amount of NG dissolved in the oil. The volume is typically noted as cf/bbl....cubic feet per barrel of oil. I've yet to see BP offer a NG yield for this reservoir. But in general reservoirs in this trend at this depth tend to be rather NG rich. Just as a rough guage if the well is flowing 5,000 bopd it might also be flowing several hundred million cubic feet of NG.

That's one reason these wells can produce at such high rates: as the well is produced the pressure is lowered and the NG comes out of solution and acts like the CO2 in a warm bottle of soda when you shake it up.

Even a straight hole wiggles around a few dozen feet, and the kelly is about 80' above the sea (from vague memory), so MD = 17,500' should give TVD = 17,400' or so ?

Best Hopes for Extra Credit Points,

Alan

Why not place a large diameter steel or concrete
open ended cylinder ( think sonotube ) over the BOP

Allow it to settle in the bottom mud/goop ..
Then pump it full of concrete ??

Essentially you'd be encasing/entombing the BOP in a
concrete plug ..

I'm assuming that due to the kinked riser or partial
crimping of the well head that the current flowrate
thru the BOP is low relative to the completely unrestricted
flowrate that would result from just an open wellhead ??

Triff ..

Option A shows promise..it would remove some of the back presssure and maybe slow down the leak but it wouldn't shut it off. Perhaps if the pressure was lower a patch could be put on (weld? bolt?) the other leak, or the dome might work then.

Good if such a contraption was stored in a warehouse in New Orleans. But months to design, fabricate cloth and assemble.

Alan

neuter: there is no investment to save. Not only is the original well a total loss but even after the relief well kills the flow BP will have to re-enter the original hole and plug and abandone it as per Fed specs. That step alone could cost over $50 million. The only money BP will ever make out there is by drilling new wells and putting in the production system. And no, the value of any oil recovered from the slick will be worth far less then the cost to recover it. And no, the relief well won't be used for production. It will also be abandoned as per fed specs. Best guess the relief well is another $150 million flushed down the toilet for BP. And, IMHO, the money they are spending on the "dome" is more for PR than any reasonable hope for success.

If BP develops this field then I'll esitmate it will be at least 5 years before they see the first $ of cash flow and then another 2 or 3 years before the first $ of profit is recovered.

The valve at the wellhead - the BOP or blow out preventer - failed to close off the flow of oil and gas (its intended function)and is basically non-functional junk with the caveat that it is apparently restricting the flow from the well. Hydraulic rams within the device were supposed to shear through the casing and drill pipe to close the well after the accident but it seems that they only crushed the piping and oil and gas can still make their way though the valve. Repeated attempts to get it to completely close have failed. If there was any way to get it to operate BP would be jumping for joy. Not sure what you mean by "catastrophic means", but if they could do so they would. There is contemplation of injecting cement and debris into the well to seal it but there is a very real fear that such an attempt may fail and lead to complete loss of control of the flow of oil. Your impression is entirely mistaken. The object of the relief wells being drilled is to permanently seal the well - it is done - a complete loss with all the added costs of cleanup and liability for other losses and the deaths of 11 workers.

All of the efforts are designed to limit the flow of oil, and thus the environmental damage, and to close the well as soon as it can be safely done. If there was a way to do so today, tomorrow, or a week ago it would have been done.

BP 'could' stop the gusher at any time using catastrophic means -at the wellhead- but CHOOSES not to in order to save their investment.

Is this correct?

It is really the other way round, if they had a means to shut it off right now, they would do so even if that meant losing the well. With the ongoing clean up costs, claims for damages and the two relief wells they are drilling that adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars. It would be far more cost effective for them to plug the gusher, then start on a completely new production well.

The fact is there is no quick way to plug the well, not even a catastrophic one.

Sealing the riser pipe will cause it to experience wellhead pressure - beyond its design capability - and burst. That is the fear I believe - otherwise they would bandaid the leak at the kink and cut and cap the end...

sd -- the relief well will be drilled at an angle to hit the original cased hole close to the 18,000' reservoir that is spewing. That's why it may take a few months to drill: need to get to about the same depth as the blow out source. A mill bit will be used to cut thru the steel casing. At that point a very large volume of very heavy drilling mud will be forced into the original well bore. This should put enough back pressure on the reservoir to stop the flow of oil/NG. After the wild well is killed BP will still need to reenter the top of the original hole and plug it according to Fed specs.

A gravel, tar, sand & rubber mixture should be dumped from barges to form a 200 ft tarmac mountain over the BOP to stop the gusher and cap the well.

Jet - The problem is the pressure differential. As a well is drilled the pressure increases with depth in a linear manner. But at certain depths the pressure rapidly jumps. At those points the mud weight has to be raised. Picking those points is what I did as a well site pore pressure analyst. But the higher mud weights will fracture the lower pressured shallow rocks. Very similar to what the do when fracing those shale as plays. If they cut the flow at a shallow depths it would fracture the rocks surrounding the relief well. Not only would it end that effort you could end up with a second blow out spewing oil/NG into the GOM. And you could also have an "underground blowout". Thus when the relief well cuts the original close to the depth of the spewing reservoir the pore pressures will be similar.

T-Tex, what is being contemplated is trying to plug the wellhead valve - the BOP stack - to stop the flow at the wellhead and prevent it from reaching the riser. This is the 'junk shot' that has been talked about in the press. If the engineers thought it was safe to do so they would most likely unbolt the riser from the BOP and install a new valve there to cut off the flow. It seems, however, that they believe the kinked riser is restricting the flow somewhat (a good thing as long as it doesn't fail there) - that and the fact that the top of the BOP was damaged when the riser collapsed have left few options except for trying to collect the leaking oil without disturbing the riser and trying to figure out how to plug the valve itself - safely, without making the situation worse. It is also quite possible that the leak is getting worse over time and this may be another reason they are trying to figure a way to plug the valve - as the high pressure oil and gas make their way through the BOP stack they may be eroding the pathway and enlarging it.

This rather large .jpg graphic shows the scene reasonably well:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deepwaterhorizonresponse/4601914103/sizes/o...