A little bit of update from my buddies. Oil, as had been reported, has washed passed a few booms. About 50-100 barrels got past some boom and into a small patch of wetland. Crews are on site and already cleaning it up, but it is difficult work in those conditions. The good news is that its not a major patch of oil and the booms have been reset in the area to contain more getting in. There are about 40 boats in the area of media lined up for their turn to take pictures of the patch of swamp weed with the oil in it, but the clean up efforts are not hampered much by them being there. Another one of the guys said that BP claims to be catching up to 3/5 of the oil, and he believes it. The oil surfacing at the site has been visibly reduced by quite a bit and they are actually able to skim off, contain, or burn most of it as it surfaces, so there is hope that there is a net balance of oil in the slick now, that is: the capture device in the area is pulling enough out that they can stay even with the oil as the rest surfaces. There has been arguments in the media about the true size of the spill, but the folks on scene are able to contain it pretty well at this point, not matter what the actual volume is. Of course everyone involved in the project is hoping/praying/keeping fingers crossed that they kill the well this weekend.
UPDATE: Apparently BP is about to update the government's estimate of oil and raise it. The siphon is up to pulling about 5000 barrels a day now, and there is still non-captured oil. No idea what the new estimate will be, but initially mentioned it may be in the 7000-10000 range.
Despite the spirited defense, I for one, will not be surprised when we learn that this disaster is the worst in history and we have been getting bamboozled by big oil all along.
Been a while since I posted current stats: Two things that seem to be popping up... If the oil reaches FL (which it is expected to do), it will be in a "weathered" condition making skimming ineffective. Thus, booms are the only defense for FL. Also, it seems there is a concern that ship traffic in the Gulf is taking advantage of the situation and emptying bilges if they are near the spill. If that's so, there needs to be heavy and severe punishment for any company committing such an offense.
The top kill method is used fairly regularly and is very successful, just not in 5000 feet of water. While working the containment methods, they have been testing the heck out of the well head and BOP for the last couple of weeks. They have engineers from every subsea firm you can think of running the specs on this operation. It is only after weeks of testing that they are going to try this. The main reason is that they don't want to damage the BOP any further and release the full capacity of the well, which would be many times worse. They will complete prep and test today to get ready with the operation sometime on Sunday. My only hope is that the media and government pressure to get the well capped is not driving them to try something too risky. It would be better to have the current leak until August and not something 10 times worst until August. They are apparently getting sign off from every government agency involved (about 2 dozen of them) before they attempt this. Keep this one in your prayers as this is probably the best chance to completely stop the well until the relief wells get there.
No. I just hope they aren't being pushed to do something risky. I would have no way of knowing one way or the other. BP will take the fault either way. Allthough, if they did not want to do this as they thought it was too risky, but the government "put their foot on their throat" to get the well capped as quickly as possible, risk be darned, well. You can see that they are already under tremendous pressure. Who knows what is going on in the back room discussion between various government officials and the people actually working the incident. And of course I said I HOPE that this is not the case. It probably isn't. I didn't say it WAS the case. If it was too risky, wouldn't you hope they would come out and say "we can't risk the situation of making it worse, we're just going to have to continue with other options until August." I'm not sure the current environment in the media and pressure from the government would make it very easy for them to come out and say that if it was the case.
I didn't know that DH rig had a history of problems before this disaster. I hope whoever was responsible for that negligence gets punished appropriately (though I doubt it).
So I have a quick update on the various kill options being worked. Listed below are the options that are being worked right now, and the order that they will try them. 1. Top Kill method: this is the heavy mud injection that will probably happen tomorrow that hopefully will kill the well. Estimates have it at 60-70% probability of working. 2. If top kill doesn't work, they will "junk shot" the well to try to clog it up. 3. There is a new well insertion tube being created. Now that they know the pressure and space that they are working with the current tube, they are creating a second tube that will fit better. The current tube has averaged out to about 2,000 barrels a day collected depending on oil/gas mixture for the day. Some days the well puts out 70% methane, some days 30%, so the amount of oil per day is a big variable. 4. There is now a plan to cut the broken riser and insert a sealed top hat with methenol straight on top of the BOP. They can do this because they were actually able to lift the top portion of the BOP to the surface and make some repairs and changes to be able to perhaps to this. The hope is that the suction seal will prevent sea water from getting into the containment unit at the same time injecting methenol to prevent hydrates if it does. This method would hopefully collect 90%. 5. If none of these work, they will try to install a new BOP on top of the old one. 6. The next fail safe that is currently being worked are the two relief wells. There are apparently about 5 other options being considered. All of the efforts of these options are being worked in parallel, and they will try each new one as needed.
http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/cousteau-jr-this-is-a-nightmare-a-nightmare-20009724 Footage in the water of the oil + chemical dispersant. It looks like it clumps the oil up and makes it sink into the water. I'm going to avoid eating wild-caught seafood from the Gulf for the next 10+ years.
Top kill (or some other means to permanently plug the hole) should have been done in week 1. But no, their original thought was most assuredly "this spill may not be that bad, lets try to save the well bore". Once it came to light how bad it was, they started to panic. And here we are several weeks later... Really, they thought building and dropping a metal container over the hole, and then trying to build and insert a secondary tube was faster then simply getting the resources in place to top kill? I do have prior experience in the various drilling and completion fluids and it does not take long at all to formulate an appropriate density mud.
So ... anyone else suspect that BP's delay in attempting any fix arose from the fact that they were trying to find a way to preserve the well and the oil while fixing the problem? I do.
You would both be incorrect. The top kill has not been an option so far for several reasons. 1. They have had to physically alter the BOP. By physically alter, I mean they have had to literally saw pieces off of it, and attach new parts 5000 feet below the surface. 2. They physically lifted a huge chunk of the well head to the surface to test it/alter it to be able to perform this. 3. They have been constantly testing the well head and BOP to make sure they don't damage it further. 4. Only in the last few days or so have they figured out how to even perform the task. 5. It took them a couple of weeks to move in three large tankers with enough drilling mud so they have 10s of thousands of barrels of mud to attempt the procedure. All in all, this procedure is using about 200 people, doing about 200 different things all at the same time, 5000 feet below the surface, with about 2 dozen surface ships and about 20 ROVs. Its actually a massive operation that has never been attempted in the history of man kind. They had to figure out how to do, plan it, move in the special equipment, and test the hell out of it so they don't blow the whole thing up. As for coming up with the correct mud, there was the matter of formulating it, getting it on the ships, rigging the BOP as an injector, building the manifold, attaching it...all at 5000 feet under water. As soon as they spudded the relief well, that should indicate that this well was done for. The relief well, when completed, destroys this well, and essentially becomes the new well whether any of the above options work or not. Here is all the info: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-a-top-kill-2010-5
Buddy sent me the video of some of the ROV stuff: http://bp.concerts.com/gom/rovs_24052010.htm At first it looks like Power Point, but there is neat video too.
I don't. From what I've read its an exploratory well and their stock price has gone down pretty far since the spill. I doubt the oil they can recover from this well is worth the hit their stock price has taken in the last couple weeks.
