oil spill

[cauzomb]

Anyone see the news lately? there's some oil rig in the gulf coast that sunk, and bent up the pipeline from the well, n the well is leaking thousands of gallons of crude into the gulf every day. There's a huge oil slik that threatens the costline, wildlife, and the seafood industry of that area... They said they were going to close the valve on the well head? but couldn't close it cause it's like 1500 meters deep..

I was thinking they put some kind of clam shell valve over a section of the pipe that was still round, then like, put loose bolts through the valve to hold it on the pipe, with another ring bolted firm behind the valve body.. With strong cables or something teathering the valve body hard to the pipe. Something that a machine/robot could lossen to let the valve body slip into position.. after they use detonation cutting charges to sever the damaged pipe, they could slide the valve towards the open end of the pipe, then bolt the rest down, so there's like a bolt down gap between the main clam shell, and the valve body.. then once the main clam shell is bolted down and sealed, they could bolt down the valve body to the main clam shell, leaving the valve open, untill everything was bolted firm, then close the valve.. They could also use those vortex oil/water seperators to suck up the slick.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W8_GpMz9nI

[Mathster]

I have been keeping up with this.
part of the problem is apparently when the cementing job failed, they had a wash between the casing.
what they will usually do is drill the first 1000 or so feet for 30" casing, then go back and drill deeper for 24" casing, and go in stages. usually four or five casing runs down to a 8 to 12 inch final casing. apparently between the final casing run (which they already run and cemented in place) and one of the earlier casing runs, the cement job failed. The well head is attached to the smallest casing size. the other sizes are usually open. the problem Im hearing is the well is leaking in three different places including the open well and failed valve..
The plan is to basically cap the whole mess and pump faster than the oil is coming out until they can directional drill in from the side below the damage (hit a 12" target thru a mile of rock). once they drill into the well below the damage, they can pump in a heavy mud and kill the well.
Its a mess.

[cauzomb]

put something over the whole thing that looks like a cows milker :P

[Gizmokid2005]

I've been paying attention. I'm quite irritated about it, but there's nothing I can do. And the government and BP are too stupid to do something LOGICAL about it. So I try to just keep up on it and not let it bother me too much. They have more meetings in Washington with management than are needed...they need to talk to people who actually understand wtf is going on...