Leaked report: Government fears Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

Al.com ^ | 4-30-10 | Ben Raines

[Sybeck1]

How about a plug? We have any old ships in the mothball fleet?

[444Flyer]

“OBAMA SENDING ‘SWAT TEAMS’ TO INSPECT OIL RIGS......?”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2504803/posts

(Per Mark Levin)

[maine yankee]

From the President;

” Let me be clear: BP is responsible for this leak; BP will be paying the bill. “

Mommy,mommy, billy did it! Billy did it ! It's not my fault. Billy did it !

How freakin’ juvenile

[combat_boots]

The whole “Day 1” meme the Administration is talking should be more like “Day 1-2” Of course, some could say it was made larger on Day 11. Get it?

[dennisw]

Drop a huge block of steel on it to at least reduce the flow. Better yet glass it shut with a nuke

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Uh, not to expect a report to know about math, but isn't an order of magnitude logarithmic, not "10 time larger?"

That is what I always thought - squared, cubed, etc. I am certain that would not be the case here. 5,000 bpd would then be 25,000 bpd or 125,000 bpd, etc., depending on the "magnitude."

[jpsb]

There are two common scales one is based on 10 the other based on e which is 2.7 something.

[AD from SpringBay]

Concrete slab?

[70th Division]

We need a deep water version of Fred Adair.

[Dallas59]

From another websight...

By the way, I am not against drilling it, I am just against doing so without proper controls.

B 1. The rig that was drilling was not a US Flagged rig. That means US Inspectors were not allowed on board the rig to inspect it. As a matter of National Security under the GATT the USA has a right to demand US Only in various technology. The USA should never allow a foreign flag vessel to drill for oil in the US Economic Zone (200 mile limit).

B 2. Acoustic automated shut of devices should be required.

B 3. I think US Federal Inspectors should have to be resident on and inspecting rigs like this 24/7.

B 4. I think that the drilling should be required to do some smaller holes that deliberately miss the main deposit that test the structure before main drilling operations happen.

B 5. Careful procedures should be in place to set up wells before they hit the main deposit. The well casing should have to be inserted well before the drill hits the deposit and it should have to be cemented in at least 2 weeks prior to finishing the hole down to the oil or gas. This is to give the cement time to set. The casing should have ridging to make this cement have a tight wedged grip on the miles of rock around it. This is required because the lift pressure on a pipe in this case could easily reach 20 million pounds of lift. This is an insane amount of up pressure. Even at 70,000 psi it would lift about 140 million pounds. (almost 64,000 long tons!)

[Bean Counter]

I believe this report goes part in parcel with ongoing discussions about installing another Blow Out Preventor (BOP). If the pressure going through the old BOP is too high, then it would be impossible to remove the damaged floating riser pipe, which is necessary before you can bolt the new BOP in place.

The only thing holding back an all our gusher is the damaged riser. If they can even partially activate the old BOP, and those efforts are ongoing as well, then they might be able to slow it down long enough to get the new BOP in place and shut the gusher off completely.

There is also an effort underway to install some sort of measuring device or pressure gage somewhere on the riser to directly measure to pressure.

Keep in mind that everything is being done by ROV in 5,000 feet of water in a highly toxic, explosive and flammable environment. The best crews in the world are on this right now. Nobody is more qualified to fix this than the guys who are working it as we speak...

[ridesthemiles]

Nothing I have heard...

What if this was NOT an accident-
What if it was sabotage?

S Korea owns the rig- BP was leasing it & operating it.

What if S Korea was the target?

[ridesthemiles]

There are over 2000 deep water oil rigs in the Gulf alone.

[Izzy Dunne]

isn't an order of magnitude logarithmic, not "10 time larger?"

An order of magnitude does mean 10x the size.

Adding one zero (1000 -> 10000) is one order of magnitude.

[Riodacat]

“’Obama’s Katrina’: an Illustrated Timeline”

Katrina was a natural disaster and the Fed response was to save American lives. That is a Constitutional mandate.
This oil flow is a private sector failure and the Fed response is to protect the livelihoods of Americans. No lives are in danger.
If we now agree that the Feds should step in everytime the private sector screws up and peoples livelihoods are at stake (ala Insurance and banking failure, the Auto industry, mortgages/housing, etc), then we shouldn't be surprised if they enact a lot more laws which make such failures less likely.
We can't have it both ways.

[wiggen]

I have an incredibly stupid question. Its so stupid that i have yet to even see it asked in any of the myriad threads i have read.
Can leaks like this occur naturally? (i am in no way suggesting this was.) The earth is always shifting around a bit so it would seem only natural that this can occur in nature. Has there ever been an oil spill in nature? This is pure curiousity.

[George from New England]

“There are over 2000 deep water oil rigs in the Gulf alone.”

Yes, but when something goes wrong it appears to be unmanageable.

Doing it on land expands ten or a hundred-fold the options for dealing with it.

[Bean Counter]

It is also my understanding from reading a number of other websites that actually deal with these problems, that an enormous “kick” or pressure surge started, and according to more than one expert opinion that I have read, when you detect a kick like that the rig crew should do two things as fast as possible:

1. Initiate an emergency cycling of the Blow Out Preventor

2. Evacuate the rig.

The eleven people who are still missing and presumed dead are most likely the actual platform crew who stayed at their posts attempting to get control over the “kick” until they were immolated in the explosion. These guys sound like heroes to me, and God Bless them and their families for giving their lives while doing the best they could.

In fact, there were systems in place that were supposedly designed to prevent this, and the “fail safe” BOP failed utterly for some reason. I’m quite sure that once the gushing oil is finally brought under control, and I have no doubt that it will be, there will be extensive forensic examination of the entire rig to determine exactly what went wrong. BP and a lot of other companies have invested billions in this technology, and I don’t believe they bought into a pig in a poke. There was some sort of catastrophic malfunction here that must have exceeded the design specs of the rig by several degrees of magnitude, and everyone will want to know exactly what happened.

[MozarkDawg]

Katrina was a natural disaster and the Fed response was to save American lives. That is a Constitutional mandate.

The president of the United States may not violate the sovereign space of any of the individual states at his whim -- it was the state, more importantly the local government that failed the citizens during Katrina; FEMA is not a first responder.

[Smokin' Joe]

4. I think that the drilling should be required to do some smaller holes that deliberately miss the main deposit that test the structure before main drilling operations happen.

THey are called 'dusters' or 'dry holes' and are the reaso oil companies go out of business. Apparently you have no idea how expensive it is to drill even a 'smaller' hole offshore in deep water.