Prof. Goose's comment:

A continued humble and sincere thank you to all who have donated thus far. It will help us pay for the fourth server we brought online to accommodate the increased traffic. (See point 3 below.)

1. The Oil Drum is a special place. We strive to maintain a high signal to noise ratio in our comment threads. Short, unengaging comments, or comments that are off topic, are likely to be deleted without notice. (to be clear--engaging, on point humor and levity, more than welcome.)

We are trying to perform a service to the public here to coordinate smart people who know their stuff with other people who want to learn about what's going on. Promotion of that ideal will be the criteria by which we make our decisions about what stays and what goes.

Flame wars, polemic exchanges, and other content deleterious to the community will be removed, either by an editor or by the community through its moderation process.

2. If you see a problematic comment USE THE COMMENT MODERATION SYSTEM--see the "Flag as inappropriate" and (?) beside it? Learn more there. If you see comments that are questionable after you've done that (that aren't being removed), let us know at the eds email address.

It is up to this community to enforce the norms we have established here (a high signal to noise ratio), keep. it. up.

Our guide to commenting at TOD can be found here: http://www.theoildrum.com/special/guidelines . Please check it out if you are unfamiliar with it, but it is essentially 1) citations welcome (if not necessary), 2) be kind to others, and 3) be nice to the furniture.

3. We have gotten a lot of queries whether this bump in traffic is adding costs to keep the site functioning. Truth is, yes, we are incurring added expenses from these events. It is also true that we try not to beg from you very often as we are not the types to bother you with constant queries.

That being said, if you are inclined to help out, your support is always welcome and very much appreciated. To those who have already given, thank you very much.

You can find the donate button in the top left hand corner of the main page.

4. If you have come here to vet your plan to kill the well, understand that you will be queried on whether or not you have read the other 10 previous comment threads and all the myriad plans that have already been run by the kind folks in this room; if you have actually read all 10 comment threads and still think your plan has legs, well, then maybe yours really is the one that will save the Gulf of Mexico.

This is not to say that well considered questions about current attempts and modifications to those attempts are not welcome; they are. But try to place them in context and in what's actually going on, as opposed to your MacGyver dream solution where you have a 10 megaton bomb, an ice pick, and Commander Spock at your side.

5. Also, if you're looking for live chat to talk about the ROV/LMRP video, etc., and are IRC capable, go to freenode, the channel is #theoildrum

(google MIRC and download it; Hit the lightening bolt and fill in your info; select the server as "freenode" (it is in the server list), hit connect; when connected type /join #theoildrum)

or you can get there just via a browser: http://webchat.freenode.net / Just enter a nickname and #theoildrum in the boxes; then when connected type /join #theoildrum)

6. Don't be afraid to go back and read the last couple of open threads yesterday and today before you start on this thread. They are really good, and will likely catch you up if you have been out of the loop for a while. We shut down threads when we get to 300-400 comments, as it's really unmanageable. Lots of good stuff in there though.

Dougr,

FYI: your post has been picked up by the MSM.

http://gawker.com/5565779/what-if-we-cant-stop-the-bp-oil-leak

Dan

IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka says IEA will release a report next week estimating a loss of about 900K per day in global oil production over the next 5 years, much higher than previous estimates.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/business-15749628/20400547 (5 min video)

Wonder what this means for Australia's "independence"?

enormous new article at nyt online

"They wondered if the blades had by chance closed uselessly on one of the nearly indestructible joints that connect drilling pipe — a significant bit of misfortune, given a decision years before to outfit the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout preventer with just one blind shear ram when other rigs were already beginning to use two of them to guard against just this possibility."

Failure of Rig’s Last Line of Defense Tied to Myriad Factors

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/us/21blowout.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

First of all, apologies for a probably naive question and/or if I bring up something that has already been covered in previous threads. I know nothing about oil and work in a completely different industry, but I'm posting this just to still my curiosity...

I'm a bit surprised over how difficult it seems to be to estimate the volume of oil spilt. As this article line out, the estimates vary wildly:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/06/oil-spil...

For a layman like me, that seems strange. There are non-invasive methods to measure the flow of liquid through a pipe. If the BOP doesn't have a flow meter, wouldn't it make sense to attach one to the (still intact?) pipe below it? Or is there something else (depth, oil/gas mix, ...?) that makes this impossible or that would account for the large spread in estimated volumes...? Or could it be that - as some people suggest - there are more leaks than the one at the top of the well?

Reply to Lf from the last post: Lf: Anandarko, Mitsui and BP were and are in a joint venture operating agreement ("JOA") on Deep Water Horizon. BP owned 65%, Anadarko 25% and Mitsui 10%. Any court ordered payment for damages or, probably, the $20 billion BP just agreed to pay to set up a Damage Fund would be shared on an ownership percentage UNLESS, EXCEPT IF one party committed a grossly negligent act or acts which resulted in the damages or caused the damages through its willful misconduct.

To quote the press release by Anadarko: 'BP's behavior and actions likely represent gross negligence or willful misconduct and thus affect the obligations of the parties under the operating agreement." http://www.anadarko.com/Investor/Pages/NewsReleases/NewsReleases.aspx?re...

So what Anadarko is really saying? "Suck it up. It's all yours BP, baby. Every last cent of damages which could amount to, oh, let's pick a round number, $100 billion. We ain't paying the $25 billion of our share because of the EXCEPTION."

It's kinda like slapping your spouse in the face with a dead mackerel.

How come I have seen NO discussion of [OEMs]? Uh, I don't have a clue why you haven't seen it, there have been a lot of posts on it. Try entering "Joye" in the search box for a start.

Thanks, Brat, you made me go look it up. And then the thread closed while I was knee-deep in coliforms. The noise to signal here is deafening. I searched for "oil eating microbes anaerobic marine" in Google Scholar with limits since 2002 to find the second and third article from 2007 and 2010.

This first is from MicrobeWiki, so still not the big picture. Nitrogen and phosphorus are not limiters; it's already a dead zone from fertilizer. But the oxygen definitely would be. The predominant aerobic OEM like upper layers.

http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Alcanivorax

Alcanivorax, first described in 1998, is a Gram-negative, halophilic, aerobic, rod-shaped, oil-degrading marine bacterium that is found in low abundances in unpolluted environments in the upper layers of the ocean, but quickly becomes the predominant microbe in oil-contaminated open oceans and coastal waters when nitrogen and phosphorus are not limiting [2]. When conditions in these moderately halophilic environments are right, Alcanivorax may make up 80-90% of the oil-degrading microbes present in the area [4]. It is described as a non-motile bactertium which is true for species such as Alcanivorax borkumensis, but other species such as Alcanivorax venustensis were described to be motile by polar flagella [1]. The optimial conditions described for A.borkumensis growth include temperatures in the range of 20-30 degrees celsius, and a NaCl concentration of 3-10%.

As a result of their profound ability to degrade and live predominately on alkanes, as well as to become the dominant microbes in oil-contaminated areas, Alcanivorax plays a huge role in the biological cleanup of oil-contaminated environments. These oil-contaminated environments in the ocean are largely due to anthropogenic sources such as oil spills caused by tankers accidents (Figure 2), and cause serious ecological damage to plants and animals on the coast as well as other inhabitants of the ocean. Microbes such as Alcanivorax provide a major route for the breakdown of these pollutants, and demonstrate how marine bacteria keep the environment in check. Of all the Alcanivorax species and other oil-degrading microbes, Alcanivorax borkumensis is one of the most important worldwide due to the fact it produces a wide variety of very efficient oil-degrading enzymes. With this knowledge, A. borkumensis could provide a useful tool for bioremediation of oil spills.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VRV-4NP3P27-1...

Over the past few years, a new and ecophysiologically unusual group of marine hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria – the obligate hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria (OHCB) – has been recognized and shown to play a significant role in the biological removal of petroleum hydrocarbons from polluted marine waters. The introduction of oil or oil constituents into seawater leads to successive blooms of a relatively limited number of indigenous marine bacterial genera — Alcanivorax, Marinobacter, Thallassolituus, Cycloclasticus, Oleispira and a few others (the OHCB) — which are present at low or undetectable levels before the polluting event. The types of OHCB that bloom depend on the latitude/temperature, salinity, redox and other prevailing physical-chemical factors. These blooms result in the rapid degradation of many oil constituents, a process that can be accelerated further by supplementation with limiting nutrients. Genome sequencing and functional genomic analysis of Alcanivorax borkumensis, the paradigm of OHCB, has provided significant insights into the genomic basis of the efficiency and versatility of its hydrocarbon utilization, the metabolic routes underlying its special hydrocarbon diet, and its ecological success. These and other studies have revealed the potential of OHCB for multiple biotechnological applications that include not only oil pollution mitigation, but also biopolymer production and biocatalysis.

And below from 2010. The Italians appear to be the experts on this topic; they wax lyrical.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/l41r11mhu222236t/

Crude oil is toxic for most life forms, and environmental pollution by petroleum hydrocarbons causes major ecological problems, especially in marine environments. Fortunately, a considerable amount of petroleum entering the sea is eliminated by the activities of naturally occurring microbial communities. Bacteria such as Alcanivorax spp. provide a major route for the breakdown of these pollutants, and demonstrate how marine bacteria keep the environment in check. Of all the Alcanivorax species and other oil-degrading microbes, Alcanivorax borkumensis is one of the most important worldwide. This obligate hydrocarbonoclastic bacterium (petroleum hydrocarbons serve almost exclusively as its source of carbon and energy) is cosmopolitan and found in various marine environments. The whole-genome sequencing followed by annotation and functional analyses revealed astonishing adaptive capacities of A. borkumensis. Characteristics that enable A. borkumensis to obtain an ecologically competitive advantage to both adapt rapidly to the presence of oil and thrive in most oceans of the world include: its oligotrophic lifestyle and high affinity for hydrocarbon substrates, biofilm formation at the oil-water interface, niche-specific stress responses, and its ability to overcome carbon/nutrient imbalances typical of oil spills by specific systems for scavenging of nutrients, particularly organic and inorganic nitrogen. It degrades a range of petroleum hydrocarbons and typically dominates oil-degrading microbial communities by virtue of a combination of streamlined and efficient central metabolic functions and diverse hydrocarbon degradation and emulsification abilities.

which led to the brave old world of whale falls, and the strange things that can happen in the depths.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/273/1601/2625.full

While I was in there, I looked up marine mucilage to see what's in that stuff. Vibrio, coliforms, etc. Nice! I guess that's the kind of facultative anaerobes we can expect to be happy down there now from a combination of anoxia and source pollution?

http://assets0.pubget.com/pdf/19759910.pdf

Viruses and prokaryotes associated with marine mucilage
The microscopic analyses we conducted on samples of marine mucilage revealed the presence of huge prokaryotic and viral abundances (on average 3.7662.53 106 cells and 1.1160.26 109 viruses mL21). Prokaryotic and viral abundances in mucilage were significantly higher (ANOVA P,0.001) than in surrounding seawater (Figure 2A). Molecular analyses demonstrated the presence of a huge bacterial diversity within the mucilage, with a number of ribotypes significantly higher (approximately double; ANOVA P,0.01) than in surrounding seawater (Figure 2B and 2C). The number of bacterial taxa encountered in the mucilage matrix contributed for ca 68% to the total number of bacterial taxa identified. We found that more than 90% of the bacterial taxa encountered in the mucilage were not found in the surrounding seawater.

Molecular analyses based on fluorescent in situ hybridization revealed that mucilage contained a large number of pathogenic bacteria (Figure 2D). The abundance of coliforms per unit of volume in marine mucilage per unit of volume was four orders of magnitude higher than in surrounding seawater, and Vibrio spp. were significantly more abundant than in the water column (ANOVA, p,0.01). The use of molecular fingerprinting tech- niques (ARISA) carried out both on mucilage and on the surrounding seawater provided evidence that mucilage aggregates not only entrap prokaryotes present in the water column, but also contain bacterial species (Escherichia coli and Vibrio harveyi), which were absent in surrounding seawater.

Where's an ecologist when you need one?

Bedtime thought on the Joint Venture between BP, Anandarko, and Mitsui:

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Chapter 1, first line

Some have mentioned a well log showing 60' of pay. I'd like to look at it - does anyone have a link? I tried to look in the archives but was unsuccessful.

Thanks for response to my question in previous thread re recovery of the DWH structure. Obviously stopping the spill is more critical to current events. Hoping for families of all souls lost, the physical act of raising her will give them some sense of closure, if that would ever be possible.

With respect to the rig (hull?) itself, what types of components had any chance of being salvaged which could provide information for root cause informtion? Logs, instrument settings molten in time, gauges, etc.? What could be gleaned fom the structure for future investigation? Just my humble opinion it would be necessary for creating and communicating findings.

Thanks to all from your grateful new poster from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Earned my BSBA and MBA from University of Tulsa during the late 80's/early 90's.
Any here who graduated through Petroleum Engineering School? Quite a national and international school during my days, but not so vibrant lately.
Also I am blind in one eye, so hope you will forgive typos.

Blue Bell Cookies n Cream :-)

The wild speculation, something that was absent the from the oildrum up the last couple of days, is growing increasingly shrill.

Sadly, when a discussion forum, such as this, gains notoriety from the MSM because of its sanity, it attracts the opposite en-mass. Some of that ilk is quoted, based on the past logical thought of the previous discussions, essentially becoming media "facts". What a conundrum faces theoildrum.

I would think that a leakage into a formation at 1,000 feet below the surface would find it easier to migrate along the outside of casing to the base of the BOP, rather that five miles laterally and then upwards through a thousand feet of mud, yet I have seen no visible leakage at the base of the BOP

I suppose that BP has more information than they are releasing about the results of the top-kill, which may answer many questions and is resulting in the doomsday speculation. However, considering that they are under threat of, no reality of, criminal prosecution, the lack of full disclosure is understandable. For any information released now becomes evidence in a criminal trial.
Another conundrum.

Tony may come to look back fondly on the friendly faces that confronted him in Congress. I imagine Dudley might have some tips for him.

BP chief plans trip to Russia to offer reassurance

LONDON — BP chief executive Tony Hayward is planning a trip to Russia to reassure President Dmitry Medvedev the oil giant is not on the verge of collapse, the Financial Times reported Monday.

Hayward will meet with Medvedev and tell him that BP can meet the cost of the liabilities from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, said the paper, without citing a source. The timing of the trip has not been finalised, it added.
..
BP is present in Russia through TNK-BP, the third largest oil producer in the country, accounting for roughly a quarter of BP's global production.

Hayward's decision to visit Russia came after Medvedev expressed concern last week over the future of the company, in a newspaper interview.

BP Chief plans trip to Russia

Petey Wheatstraw on June 20, 2010 - 8:49am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top
...
I guess you want him standing on the shore directing operations through a megaphone, making the right call every time, and personally steering the ROVs.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

No Petey, what I wanted him to do from the moment he recognized this as a National Emergency (which I don't think he has done) and to appoint someone with authority (Admiral Allen) to take over cleanup efforts (which he eventually did). And give that person the authority to commandeer any resources he deems necessary to help the cleanup. (which I don't think he has done).

I want him (actually the Admiral) to press into service ANY vessel/barge (including supertankers) capable of skimming oil, fitting them with skimming arms (such as Roger describes). Some will say the logistics are impossible to ramp up overnight. And I say we went to war overnight after Pearl Harbor and were producing war effort materiel within days. This BP spill cleanup needs the same kind of urgency.

I want him to have Secretary Salazar accelerate the cleanup of MMS (which apparently is underway) and impose a strict code of ethics on the agency (all of Interior actually).

I want him to suspend, by Executive order, ANY law or regulation that impedes cleanup efforts and order that every federal agency to NOT enforce ANY regulation (including environmental or safety) that might impede the cleanup (which he did not do), such as the Jones Act, or the CG inspection that required life jackets on the cleanup barges before they could go to work (delaying them by hours or days while paperwork was caught up - Sorry I don't have the link to that, was on either CNN or ABC).

lotus on June 20, 2010 - 8:24am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top
Old Fisherman, would you do your co-readers here a favor, please, and leave the "new" markers off your cut-and-pastes of comments? Searching the page for news via that marker (with brackets), we have to keep revisiting you -- which, instead of winning support, wastes our time and patience. Thanks.

Sure Lotus. My apologies. I should have thought of that myself. Too old and too dumb for this internet stuff I guess.

aardvark on June 20, 2010 - 9:13am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top
(quote)And I think you should have read previous posts here from people with actual experience with skimmers that work in the North Sea before posting. (/quote)

I go to the web site of Koseq the manufacturers and look at the pictures and read the explanations of how the booms work and draw my own conclusions.

The best those booms can do in the GOM oil slick is in the low 100s of barrels per day, unless they operate very close to the leak origin.

Your "conclusions" are at WIDE variance with what Roger has been telling us (100,000's gpd potential), and my sense is that Roger's info is credible.

Besides if they only collect low 1's of barrels per day, I want them working, and so should you. I want ANYTHING that cleans/soaks up even a gallon of that oil to go to work. If I were living along the LA coast, I would be collecting grass clippings (if I couldn't find any straw) taking them out on my pirogue to dump on any slicks that neared my shoreline or came in my bayous. They might not work very well but they would easier to scoop up with a crab net, if nothing else, than the oil going into the marshes. At least that would be doing something.

After reading about Anadarko (25%) launching a lifeboat to escape a sinking BP, I was wondering about the other minority partner, MOEX (MitEnergy (Mitsui))(10%) to see if they were also planning a get-home free strategy.

Well, I may be late with this news; MOEX divested itself of GOM assets last year. http://www.moeco.co.jp/english/topics/091124.html to Energy XXI (21)
http://www.energyxxi.com/history.asp The acquisition closed on December 22, 2009 (See timeline.)

If I am reading this correctly, the analyst at Energy XXI who recommended the buy might be fish bait by now!

After reading about Anadarko (25%) launching a lifeboat to escape a sinking BP, I was wondering about the other minority partner, MOEX (MitEnergy (Mitsui))(10%) to see if they were also planning a get-home free strategy.

Well, I may be late with this news; MOEX divested itself of GOM assets last year. http://www.moeco.co.jp/english/topics/091124.html to Energy XXI (21)
http://www.energyxxi.com/history.asp The acquisition closed on December 22, 2009 (See timeline.)

If I am reading this correctly, the analyst at Energy XXI who recommended the buy might be fish bait by now!

From a state of ignorant curiosity, I cannot resist asking the knowledgable what the flow of this well would be if it was connected directly to a production platform on the surface under these conditions:

Flow through a crimped drill pipe and riser of 60,000 bbls per day at 5,000ft below mean sea level. It appears to me that the oil production of this formation would be a record in the gulf. What does removing ~ 2,000 psi resistance mean at the surface?

Re: gearhead:

"Questions: What datum (NAD83, NAD27, etc.) did you use? " in ref to my image at

http://i50.tinypic.com/2z8rxw2.jpg

The Skandi Neptune data was from a marinetraffic.com AIS plugin for Google Earth, which reportedly is WGS-84.

The reason for choosing feet is from the observation that the Skandi Neptune and Viking Posiden ROV's typically have an "N:" coordinate in the 10431607.00 range, and the Equator is 10419438.19 feet (per Mk-1 Eyeball and Google Earth). That's relatively close. The depth typically shown seems to be in feet, and matches the depth contours for the area. The "E:" coordinate seems to be geo-referenced to about 92°W, but there was more ambiguity in trying to figure that one out. All of this was just a useless mental exercise without being able to confirm a lat/lon reference point, then I happened on two occurrences of the ROV in the handling deck of Skandi Neptune at the same time I had an AIS hit via the MarineTraffic plugin. The two sets... and using an earth radius of 20855487.84 feet, yielded a miss of about 169 feet from ROV coord translation to the Skandi Neptune posits. That's well within the distance that the ROV handling area could be from the GPS antenna(s), especially when you account for the possibly of Skandi Neptune being on a different heading.

From what I've read, ROV positioning is typically accomplished with a transponder array that is then geo-referenced by a master unit. Evidently Skandi Neptune and Viking Posiden ROV's are on the same coordinate system.

Caveat: I could be wrong, very wrong, but that's what the data points at.

I never thought, after weeks of respectful attempts just to understand TOD posts, that my first one would involve asking about a solution I've heard you already blew away. But I just read 7 pages of emotional negative comments on a NYT article on why the U.S. rejected, for IMHO irrelevant political and legalistic reasons, a small nuclear blast deep underground. I can't find the TOD posts where that was discussed, so I'm asking for a repeat explanation.

My understanding: Below 500-1000 ft (?) of mud is shale rock, more fractureable than other rock substrates, all the way down to the well, I assume, though sounding details are proprietary to BP (!). Still, it's fairly easy for me to imagine a detonation large enough to displace the wellbore and pipe with a sideways blast, yet small enough not to disturb the 3 MILES of geologic substrate between the wellhead and the oil reservoir. I imagine a shale mountain around 5,000 meters high - something 33% higher than Mt. Fuji (I live near it). You have oil beneath it and a BOP on top. You place a charge maybe halfway down to bust apart a pipe only about two feet across. Will this disturb the basic structure of Mt. Fuji, which up to April, 2010 has had no trouble holding down the pressure of the oil beneath it? Hardly likely, I feel.

The result would be a (relatively) small area of fractured and oil-permeable shale. Best case, a mini-nuclear blast (I read of devices that are under 0.1 kilotons) would liquify and then seal the cavity. If not, in the worst case, and also assuming the unlikely event that if the pipe on top remained open to further flow, oil might seep up through fractured shale and re-enter the pipe. It would NOT seep upward through the miles of unfractured shale to the top of Fuji (the seafloor) to create a further disaster. In the described case, there would be at LEAST a temporary pressure drop and a chance to try again to staunch the well from the seafloor with mud or perhaps the deflated balloon option others have proposed at depths below where we think the casing may have fractured. But hopefully, the oil could no longer access the seafloor. In ANY case, you would not be causing any of the nightmare scenarios NYT commenters were shouting about.

Whether the Russian blasts were under land or sea seems irrelevant. What seems relevant to me are the depths and geological structures involved.

Thanks for all the great coverage, led me to learn very much about oil drilling, physics, Earth itself, or in a broad view, all the energy industry of our days.

I'd like to ask a question about a matter that won't really fit in the current flow of discussion - excuse me, that's probably not the first time I do that.

Did any engineer thinked about the steel casing integrity of abandoned/killed underwater wells in a manner of some hundreds or thousands of years? You may say, who cares, our evolving technology will provide solutions for these. Or who cares what will happen to our mother Earth in a millenia..?

Steel disintegrates, oxidizes in the presence of water. Saltwater boosts that process, turning even thick steel items, such as well casing strings, into rust, fractured, non-sealing antique pieces of industrial equipment. And for sure, as time passes water will find it's way deep down around or in the hole.

If the whole peak oil energy crisis carries out good enough for mankind to survive at all, IF we get away with another chance, our children should be aware of those historical monuments of human greed, as these forgotten holes will eventually evolve into oil gushers like the one we now call Macondo prospect #252. Unless we deplete these reservoirs, AND unless the abiotic oil theory proves to be wrong, that is a great threat to our future as a species, and the very existence of life on planet Earth.. And while we love the idea of interplanetary or interstellar space travel, terraforming planets and spreading life and civilization, it seems to me that we're more likely setting up a trap for our children and their children and so on, we're happy polluting not our own future, as it is beyond our lives, so who gives a f'k.

Having the gift of consciousness, got also the responsibility.

Forgive me for being totally off topic :)

From previous thread: What is a manifold?

From the replies I'm guessing a manifold is the hydraulic equivalent of an electrical distribution board -- a central point where pipe connections can be made and broken, valves turned on and off, and flow routed and re-routed. All optimised for use underwater by ROVs.

The "CDP Manifold" shown in the 06/18 Technical Briefing joins the "Autonomous Subsea Dispersant System" and another manifold leading to the choke and kill lines on the BOP. So I guess "CDP" stands for "Combined Dispersant and Product" and it mixes dispersant with the leaking oil passing through the choke and kill lines before sending it up to the Helix Producer which is arriving end June.

My guess is, if the Helix Producer and Discoverer Enterprise can handle the total flow, they'll stop flaring operations on the Q4000 and switch the flare flow to the Helix Producer. I can see how having manifolds makes it a simple operation.

In this radio broadcast story from the BBC it sounds like Transocean and BP are pointing fingers at each other. One of the pods on the BOP was apparently seen leaking. The worker says he emailed both BP and Transocean (maintenance) about it. The leaker was shut off but obviously it was not fixed. He does not know if they tried to turn the leaky one back on before the explosion.

Would have had to haul the whole BOP up in order to fix it?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10362139.stm

Could our experts please comment on this factoid from nyt today. Tks.

This from the NYT

"Last year, Transocean commissioned a “strictly confidential” study of the reliability of blowout preventers used by deepwater rigs.

Using the world’s most authoritative database of oil rig accidents, a Norwegian company, Det Norske Veritas, focused on some 15,000 wells drilled off North America and in the North Sea from 1980 to 2006.

It found 11 cases where crews on deepwater rigs had lost control of their wells and then activated blowout preventers to prevent a spill. In only six of those cases were the wells brought under control, leading the researchers to conclude that in actual practice, blowout preventers used by deepwater rigs had a “failure” rate of 45 percent."

I am sorry if I am not an engineer, geologist, physicist, biologist, or oil rig expert. But I am still pondering the question. Why can the flow not be stopped or contained in containers? If there is concern about the level of gas expanding on the way up in the oil, fill the expandable half way. (or with a calculated emptiness) That would help determine the actual makeup of the gas/oil mixture. Why are ideas not flowing here like the well? Are there no possibilities that will keep more oil and dispersants out of the Gulf? Is capturing it physically impossible? Really? I am a journalist. I think the public has a right to know.

The ripple effect of this continued flow to the world ecosystem and economy is likely to be staggering.

It is my belief that the NYT (MSM suspect) have done their bit to put out a meaningful piece in regard to the Maconda GOM blow out. I suggest that we do our bit and read/comment. Tks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/us/21blowout.html?ref=global-home

Thanks to FormerSafety and others who helped me review the nuclear issues. Over on that thread, and in this one, I learned a great deal about the severe technical difficulties implementing that choice, as well as the risks. There was one post that simply quoted, plus URLs, some arcane technical geologic literature on the GOM I could barely comprehend, but the references to widespread presence of unstable salt deposits got the point across. And that the Russians were in a clay environment, which is I assume far more stable. I guess I was motivated by things I'd read about the unreliability of relief wells, but my feeling from reading through that thread is that there's a pretty good chance of success, eventually.

Here's a follow-up question. BP's website shows them already at past 15,000 feet in Relief Well #1. What else needs to be done that will take us into August to get the well tapped?

Hmmm. Looks like TO has been having a rash of BOP issues. There were 2 that came up shortly after the DWH incident (reported by Upstream Online).

The hearing info from when Hayward was in front of Congress contains 2 docs that show that the TO Marianas was having BOP problems as well.

There is also a copy of the letter outlining the contract for the BOP mods that BP requested and said that they didn't know about right after the incident.

Like many, I have a solution which seems just too obvious, and I can't see any reason for it not to be tried.
However, getting it noticed and reviewed has proved really difficult.
Deepwater Horizon's response was an encouraging, but standard "thanks but we're already considering similar", but I don't have much confidence that it was seriously considered or understood.

The first approach used a dome which became blocked with clathrates, I presume because the riser pipe was too small. Why not make a chimney instead, relying on the lesser density of the oil and wide enough (1 to 2m), to take everything to the surface, clathrates and all?

The new riser/chimney could be as simple as a welded together mile long section of off-the-shelf oil pipeline, assembled on shore, capped and towed out to the site.
Once lowered near enough to the top of the BOP, any exudate flowing into it would be contained, rise to the surface and begin to create an ever larger suction effect as the relative density and pressure of the pipeline contents decreased. The pressure of the deep ocean would in turn push more liquid into the open end of the pipeline, and it would behave like a giant vacuum cleaner, hoovering up everything around the leak. Just like a chimney dealing with hot flue gases.

The clathrates would dissociate near the surface, and the contents could be cyclonically separated and collected or disposed of safely.

I made an illustration here: http://1hr.com/lc/

I'm a systems analyst programmer and have a degree related to physics, electronics and computing and avidly read about science all my life, however I don't have in-depth knowledge of the oil industry.

So, I would be grateful if someone here could give an appraisal and peer discussion on the practicality of my suggestion.

Andy.

Anyone care to refute the following, from nakedcapitalism this morning:

A two-inch layer of submerged oil is coating portions of the Gulf seafloor off the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge: a week after a smothering layer of floating crude washed ashore there. This scenario is being played out all along the Gulf shoreline.

Collecting in pockets and troughs in waist-deep water, the underwater oil is looser and stickier than the tarballs that cover the beach. The consistency is more like a thick liquid, albeit one made up of thousands of small globs. Unlike tarballs, which can often be picked up out of the water without staining the fingers, the submerged oil stains everything that it touches. If you passed your hand through the material it would emerge covered in oily smears.

There are a number of patches of submerged oil 40 to 100 feet off the beach, apparently collecting along rip currents and sandbars. The carcasses of sand fleas, speckled crabs, ghost crabs, and leopard crabs are spread throughout the oil, a thick layer of the material caking the bodies of the larger crabs – their claws looking as if they been turned into clubs made of oil.
***

Huge schools of bait fish are hugging the shore, attracting large numbers of birds. King mackerel, Spanish mackerel, mullet, ladyfish, speckled trout, and other fish are congregating in massive numbers amid the sharks.

The Dauphin Island Sea Lab measured large areas of low oxygen water just off the beach at Fort Morgan last week, beginning in water around 20 feet deep. Monty Graham, a University of South Alabama scientist, theorized that the population of oil-consuming microbes had swelled. Sea life begins to die if oxygen levels drop below 2 parts per million. “We saw some very low oxygen levels, some below 1,” said Graham, of testing he conducted aboard a Dauphin Island Sea Lab research vessel. He said that the layer of low-oxygen water closest to shore off Fort Morgan began at the bottom and rose up 30 feet.

Graham said he believed that the low oxygen levels were responsible for reports of strange behavior among fish: “The low oxygen explains things we’ve been hearing, like reports of flounder swimming on the surface.”

The low-oxygen levels offshore may also explain the dense aggregations of fish seen in the surf zone. The turbulent area near shore is naturally high in oxygen due to the influence of the breaking waves.

There are numerous reports that suggest that oil is moving beneath the surface in Alabama waters. State officials conducting shrimp trawls in the Mississippi Sound two weeks ago found oil on their nets when they pulled them. More recently, BP contractors working around Dauphin Island reported oil coming up on their anchors.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65D3YT20100621?type=ousivMolt

According to Reuters, Oil at $79 today, on forecast of Chinese use.