'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

[82_28]

There we have it. We're so fucked.

[DoYouEverWonder]

Box to contain oil leak touches down on Gulf floor

By HARRY R. WEBER (AP) – 1 hour ago

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — BP lowered a 100-ton concrete-and-steel vault onto a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, an important step in a delicate and unprecedented attempt to stop most of the gushing crude fouling the sea.

Underwater robots guided the 40-foot-tall box into place. Now that the contraption is on the seafloor, workers will need at least 12 hours to let it settle and make sure it's stable before the robots can hook up a pipe and hose that will funnel the oil up to a tanker.

"It appears to be going exactly as we hoped," BP spokesman Bill Salvin told The Associated Press on Friday afternoon, shortly after the four-story device hit the seafloor. "Still lots of challenges ahead, but this is very good progress."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9FI8UCG1

[82_28]

Box to contain oil leak touches down on Gulf floor

By HARRY R. WEBER (AP) – 1 hour ago

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — BP lowered a 100-ton concrete-and-steel vault onto a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, an important step in a delicate and unprecedented attempt to stop most of the gushing crude fouling the sea.

Underwater robots guided the 40-foot-tall box into place. Now that the contraption is on the seafloor, workers will need at least 12 hours to let it settle and make sure it's stable before the robots can hook up a pipe and hose that will funnel the oil up to a tanker.

"It appears to be going exactly as we hoped," BP spokesman Bill Salvin told The Associated Press on Friday afternoon, shortly after the four-story device hit the seafloor. "Still lots of challenges ahead, but this is very good progress."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9FI8UCG1

Alright, thanks for that. So WHAT IS THE NEWS OUT OF BP? WHAT IS THE TRUTH HERE?!?!?

[DoYouEverWonder]

Box to contain oil leak touches down on Gulf floor

By HARRY R. WEBER (AP) – 1 hour ago

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — BP lowered a 100-ton concrete-and-steel vault onto a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, an important step in a delicate and unprecedented attempt to stop most of the gushing crude fouling the sea.

Underwater robots guided the 40-foot-tall box into place. Now that the contraption is on the seafloor, workers will need at least 12 hours to let it settle and make sure it's stable before the robots can hook up a pipe and hose that will funnel the oil up to a tanker.

"It appears to be going exactly as we hoped," BP spokesman Bill Salvin told The Associated Press on Friday afternoon, shortly after the four-story device hit the seafloor. "Still lots of challenges ahead, but this is very good progress."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9FI8UCG1

Alright, thanks for that. So WHAT IS THE NEWS OUT OF BP? WHAT IS THE TRUTH HERE?!?!?

The truth is the robots capped off one leak. Hey, every little bit helps.

They continue to work on the other leaks but were unsuccessful. Time to give up and get them out of the way to put the box down.

Looks like the first big hurdle has been passed and the box is in place and on the Gulf floor.

We'll know by tomorrow if this is going to work. Let's hope to hell it does.

[82_28]

Actually a very good interview from CNN with the CEO of BP here. Worth watching.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/07/gulf.o ... tml?hpt=T2

[Iamwhomiam]

Deep-sea ice crystals stymie Gulf oil leak fix
Deep-sea ice crystals clog containment box in first attempt to capture oil spewing into Gulf

By NOAKI SCHWARTZ and HARRY R. WEBER, Associated Press
Last updated: 3:46 p.m., Saturday, May 8, 2010

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO -- Icelike crystals encrusting a 100-ton steel-and-concrete box meant to contain oil gushing from a broken well deep in the Gulf of Mexico forced crews Saturday to back off a long-shot plan to contain the leak.

The buildup on the specially constructed containment box made it too buoyant and clogged it up, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said. Workers who had carefully lowered the massive box over the leak nearly a mile below the surface had to lift it and move it to the side. Now they're trying to unplug it while they look at other solutions.

More than 200,000 gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf since a rig exploded April 20, killing 11. The containment box, a method never before attempted at such depths, had been considered the best hope of stanching the flow in the short term.

"I wouldn't say it's failed yet," Suttles said. "What I would say is what we attempted to do last night didn't work."

The blowout was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to interviews with rig workers conducted during BP's internal investigation.

While the precise cause is still under investigation, the sequence of events described in the interviews provides the most detailed account of the April 20 blast that killed 11 workers and touched off the underwater gusher that has poured more than 3 million gallons of crude into the Gulf.

Portions of the interviews, two written and one taped, were described in detail to an Associated Press reporter by Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety and worked for BP PLC as a risk assessment consultant during the 1990s. He received them from industry friends seeking his expert opinion.

A group of BP executives were on board the Deepwater Horizon rig celebrating the project's safety record, according to the transcripts. Meanwhile, far below, the rig was being converted from an exploration well to a production well.

Based on the interviews, Bea believes that the workers set and then tested a cement seal at the bottom of the well. Then they reduced the pressure in the drill column and attempted to set a second seal below the sea floor. A chemical reaction caused by the setting cement created heat and a gas bubble which destroyed the seal.

Deep beneath the seafloor, methane is in a slushy, crystalline form. Deep sea oil drillers often encounter pockets of methane crystals as they dig into the earth.

As the bubble rose up the drill column from the high-pressure environs of the deep to the less pressurized shallows, it intensified and grew, breaking through various safety barriers, Bea said.

"A small bubble becomes a really big bubble," Bea said. "So the expanding bubble becomes like a cannon shooting the gas into your face."

Up on the rig, the first thing workers noticed was the sea water in the drill column suddenly shooting back at them, rocketing 240 feet in the air, he said. Then, gas surfaced. Then oil.

"What we had learned when I worked as a drill rig laborer was swoosh, boom, run," Bea said. "The swoosh is the gas, boom is the explosion and run is what you better be doing."

The gas flooded into an adjoining room with exposed ignition sources, he said.

"That's where the first explosion happened," said Bea, who worked for Shell Oil in the 1960s during the last big northern Gulf of Mexico oil well blowout. "The mud room was next to the quarters where the party was. Then there was a series of explosions that subsequently ignited the oil that was coming from below."

According to one interview transcript, a gas cloud covered the rig, causing giant engines on the drill floor to run too fast and explode. The engines blew off the rig and set "everything on fire," the account said. Another explosion below blew more equipment overboard.

BP spokesman John Curry would not comment Friday night on whether methane gas or the series of events described in the internal documents caused the accident.

"Clearly, what happened on the Deepwater Horizon was a tragic accident," said Curry, who is based at an oil spill command center in Robert, La. "We anticipate all the facts will come out in a full investigation."

The BP executives were injured but survived, according to one account. Nine rig crew on the rig floor and two engineers died.

"The furniture and walls trapped some and broke some bones but they managed to get in the life boats with assistance from others," said the transcript.

The reports made Bea, the 73-year-old industry veteran, cry.

"It sure as hell is painful," he said. "Tears of frustration and anger."

On Saturday, the boat with the plumbing equipment for the containment box was about 1.5 miles from the vessel that lowered the box, which company officials hope can capture up to 85 percent of the oil and feed it into a tanker on the surface.

The task became increasingly urgent as toxic oil crept deeper into the bays and marshes of the Mississippi Delta.

A sheen of oil began arriving on land last week, and crews have been laying booms, spraying chemical dispersants and setting fire to the slick to try to keep it from coming ashore. But now the thicker, stickier goo -- arrayed in vivid, brick-colored ribbons -- is drawing ever closer to Louisiana's coastal communities.

The Coast Guard and BP said Saturday about 2.1 million gallons of an oil-water mix had been collected, with about 10 percent being oil and the rest water. More than 160 miles of boom to contain the oil has been put out and crews have used nearly 275,000 gallons of chemicals to break up the oil on the water's surface.

------

Schwarz reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Cain Burdeau, Vicki Smith and Ray Henry in Louisiana, Jeff Donn in Boston and Michael Graczyk in Houston contributed to this report.
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=927059&BCCode=BNNATION

On edit: Obviously the 200k gallons remark is incorrect. Probably meant 200k barrels.

[Nordic]

A group of BP executives were on board the Deepwater Horizon rig celebrating the project's safety record,

Just in case anybody missed that little tidbit.

[Jeff]

BP engineers have moved the four-story containment dome -- which was seen as the best short-term way to stem the flow from a ruptured oil well -- off to the side on the sea floor and will take two days trying to come up with a solution, Doug Suttles, chief operating officer, told reporters.

The problem is with gas hydrates, essentially slushy methane gas that would block the oil from being siphoned out the top of the box. As BP tries to solve it, oil keeps flowing unchecked into the Gulf in what could be the worst U.S. oil spill.

"I wouldn't say it's failed yet. What I would say is what we attempted to do last night didn't work because these hydrates plugged up the top of the dome," Suttles said.

"What we're currently doing, and I suspect it will probably take the next 48 hours or so, is saying, 'Is there a way to overcome this problem?'"

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN0314262220100508

[justdrew]

well, this makes clear that in addition to the oil, there's a large amount of methane going into the atmosphere. I wonder how much methane?

[Iamwhomiam]

Yes! That's the problem.

The slushy preferred by oilmen the world over - the damned Methane Hydrates!

Hey, after all, they could say they tried their best but failed because something colder than an oilman's heart was problematic.

Not, of course, anything to do with drilling to unprecedented depths in an extremely sensitive ecosystem where they encountered pressures never before dealt with and for which it seems they were and still are utterly ill prepared to deal with.

[Jeff]

Million gallons of oil a day gush into Gulf of Mexico

By David Randall
Sunday, 9 May 2010

An extraordinary account of how the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred emerged yesterday in leaked interviews with surviving workers from the rig. They said that a methane gas bubble had formed, rocketed to the surface and caused a series of fires and explosions which destroyed the rig and began the gushing of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening wildlife and coastal livelihoods. Oil-covered birds caught by the outer edges of the 135-mile slick are now being found.

Word also came yesterday that the oil spill may be five times worse than previously thought. Ian MacDonald, a biological oceanographer at Florida State University, said he believed, after studying Nasa data, that about one million gallons a day were leeching into the sea, and that the volume discharged may have already exceeded the 11 million gallons of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, widely regarded as the world's worst marine pollution incident. Mr MacDonald said there was, as of Friday, possibly as much as 6,178 square miles of oil-covered water in the Gulf.

...

The interviews with rig workers, described to the Associated Press by Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor, recall the chain reaction of events that led to the disaster. They said that on 20 April a group of BP executives were on board the Deepwater Horizon rig celebrating the project's safety record. Far below, the rig was being converted from an exploration well to a production well.

The workers set and then tested a cement seal at the bottom of the well, reduced the pressure in the drill column and attempted to set a second seal below the sea floor. But a chemical reaction caused by the setting cement created heat and a gas bubble which destroyed the seal.

As the bubble rose up the drill column from the high-pressure environs of the deep to the less pressurised shallows, it intensified and grew, breaking through various safety barriers. "A small bubble becomes a really big bubble," Professor Bea said. "So the expanding bubble becomes like a cannon shooting the gas into your face."

Up on the rig, the first thing workers noticed was the sea water in the drill column suddenly shooting back at them, rocketing 240ft in the air. Then, gas surfaced, followed by oil. "What we had learned when I worked as a drill rig labourer was swoosh, boom, run," he said. "The swoosh is the gas, boom is the explosion and run is what you better be doing." The gas flooded into an adjoining room with exposed ignition sources, he said. "That's where the first explosion happened," said Professor Bea, who worked for Shell Oil in the 1960s during the last big northern Gulf of Mexico oil well blow-out. "The mud room was next to the quarters where the party was. Then there was a series of explosions that subsequently ignited the oil that was coming from below."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 69472.html

[wintler2]

.. a group of BP executives were on board the Deepwater Horizon rig celebrating the project's safety record.

I wonder if there was a press release to match, that'd be a fitting memento to the delusion of human competence.

[smoking since 1879]

via the BBC.

Hairdressers, pet groomers and farmers worldwide are collecting hair and fur to help mop up the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The hair, stuffed into nylon tights, helps booms soak up thick oil spewing from the blown-out well off the coast of Louisiana.
About 370,000 salons are taking part, said the Matter of Trust charity, which is organising the massive "hair lift".

http://www.matteroftrust.org/

[Jeff]

BP struggles with list of ways to plug Gulf gusher

By HARRY R. WEBER and JOHN CURRAN (AP) – 1 hour ago

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — Top hats and junk shots are on the list of possible next steps as BP, casting about after a 100-ton containment box failed, settles in for a long fight to stop its uncontrolled oil gusher a mile under the Gulf of Mexico.

Engineers at BP PLC were wrestling with a shopping list of ways to plug the well or siphon off the spewing crude, including a smaller containment box, dubbed a top hat, and injecting debris including shredded rubber into the well as a stopper, called a junk shot.

"There's a lot of techniques available to us. The challenge with all of them is, as you said, they haven't been done in 5,000 feet of water," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told NBC's "Today" show Monday.

...

Among plans under consideration for the gusher, BP is looking at cutting the riser pipe, which extends from the well, undersea and using larger piping to bring the gushing oil to a drill ship on the surface, a tactic considered difficult and less desirable because it will increase the flow of oil.

...

Philip Johnson, a petroleum engineering professor at the University of Alabama, said cutting the riser pipe and slipping a larger pipe over the cut end could conceivably divert the flow of oil to the surface.

"That's a very tempting option," he said. "The risk is when you cut the pipe, the flow is going to increase. ... That's a scary option, but there's still a reasonable chance they could pull this off."

...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... AD9FJVJHO0

[Gouda]

Further to the stories Julia and Jeff posted on page 11...

Next step to stop oil: Throw garbage at it

(CNN) -- If using a massive dome to cover the source of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico doesn't work, crews are preparing for another option: clogging it.

Engineers are examining whether they can close a failed blowout preventer by stuffing it with trash, said Adm. Thad Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard.
...

"The next tactic is going to be something they call a junk shot," Allen told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "They'll take a bunch of debris -- shredded up tires, golf balls and things like that -- and under very high pressure, shoot it into the preventer itself and see if they can clog it up and stop the leak."