Hacker News Reader

Comment by briancooley | Hacker News Reader

There is. It's a 450 ton device called a blowout preventer It didn't activate and they have been trying to do it manually for several days.

I work in the oil and gas industry and live along the gulf coast. It's a heart wrenching situation.

View on HN

do you know what type of BOP they are using? And why it might not be working?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowout_preventer

Wikipedia says there are 2 types. Could be there is some sediment somewhere causing a mechanical failure? Or maybe some hydraulic fluids need to be heated up?

If it is going to take months to fix it using methods that have never been tried at those depths, it seems that spending some time trying to make that device work would be a good investment.

Also, can we get a temporary stackoverflow ( no pun intended ) for engineers working to solve this problem?

wasn't there supposed to be a secondary device, that cost $500,000 that they decided not to install saying it was "too expensive"

I don't know anything about their design decisions and shouldn't comment on them. However, my understanding is that a secondary device is not mandated in the US. If that's true, I expect it will change before more deepwater drilling is permitted.

yeah it's not mandatory...still, since they made something like 36 billion in 1 quarter...and since the cost a single spill would cost way more than $500,000...you'd think at $500K it'd be a cost effective decision to install it

Please don't put me in the position of defending BP. I have no affiliation with them, and I don't know all the details.

However, your argument here either is ignoring elements of the decision-making process or isn't logical, and your number ($36BB) is off by nearly an order of magnitude.

edit: In the interest of not sounding mysterious, I'll add that you have to consider the likelihood of an event and then the likelihood of all the safety systems failing to determine whether another layer of protection has any value. Of course, now that a blowout has occurred, and the safety system has failed, it is human nature to look back and play Monday morning quarterback.

The question that is bugging me is why the safety system failed. Every refinery and chemical plant in the US relies on safety systems to prevent catastrophic incidents, and it is a huge concern when they are activated, let alone fail. We review safety systems and test them regularly.

I don't think it is Monday morning quarterbacking as much as it is adding a datapoint to a set with apparently too little data in it in the first place.

Yes, an acoustic switch.

Google for "Leaking Oil Well Lacked Safeguard Device" for a good WSJ article on it.

But from reading the article

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870442350457521...

the acoustic control just activates the blowout preventer, and the dead-man switch should do the same thing. But I don't know anything beyond reading the article.

note this article: "BP Fought Safety Measures at Deepwater Oil Rigs"

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/bp-fought-safety-measures-deep...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com