Graphic: Methods That Have Been Tried to Stop the Leaking Oil | Hacker News Reader

Graphic: Methods That Have Been Tried to Stop the Leaking Oil

nytimes.com

48 pointscpg24 comments

I find it difficult to believe that the basic mechanism of the BPO is unworkable. It's composed of 4 sequential independent valves, usually hydraulically-activated from a remote location: closing any one of the 4 should shut the well down. It should be possible to disconnect/bypass the communications, electrical, and hydraulic circuitry and manipulate the individual valves directly. The parts are of extremely high quality metals. At the very least several options are available:

a) disconnect the current hydraulics, connect to an alternative hydraulic source and then close one of the valves,

b) disconnect the current hydraulics and use physical methods (e.g., ramrod, jackhammer, wrench etc.) to mechanically force each side of one of the valves closed. In other words, simply screw (in the case of the valve rods being threaded) or beat (if valve rods are smooth) the valve plates into position by hammering on their external valve rods. A jackhammer might work well since, should there be any obstruction in the valve, it should tend to break it up. If the valve rods are threaded, alternately tightening and loosening each side of the valve should tend to break up obstructions.

Exactly what I thought, why did the blow out preventer fail? It looks like it was designed for just this sort of thing

I hope that once it's sealed they recover the blowout preventer and figure out why it failed.

Why isn't it mandatory to drill a relief well at the same time as the main well?

Other countries have this requirement, why didn't the USA?

Since it's the only thing that really works, now and with past disasters, if we don't pass a law to make it mandatory after this, we deserve to have spills happen again and again.

Oh and BP's deepwater Atlantis has MORE safety problems than Horizon and no relief well.

In Canada we have the requirement that the drilling company certify they have the capability to drill a relief well before the end of the current drilling season (and the ocean freezes over).

They do not actually have to drill such a well, just promise that they can if they have to.

Misunderstanding that rule may have lead to the confusion on reddit.

Other counties do NOT have this requirement. That was a reddit fiction (in general if you saw it on reddit you can be pretty sure it's not true).

See here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1389688

Hmm, maybe I subconsciously got it from Reddit.

Well then the USA can be a pioneer again in something, mitigated greed via sane laws and requirements to prevent billions in damage and wildlife needlessly lost.

Just imagine if we get hit by ANOTHER one of these in the next decade, and here's hoping no major hurricanes this summer.

Be careful. There is no difference between a relief well and a regular well.

What do you do if your relief well blows?

Maybe if you drill two simultaneously, making sure they stay in sync. But the relief well needs to intersect with the regular one, so that might not actually be possible.

> and here's hoping no major hurricanes this summer.

Oh no. Quite the opposite! A hurricane would be the best thing possible. It would clean the entire area like nothing else can.

Theoretically you don't finish the relief well, so you can quickly finish it should the main one blow.

The big risk though is that depending on how good your understanding of the geology is, this could increase your risk.

Hurricane would be good?

Where will the oil disappear to in a hurricane? Alternate dimension? Or simply coating somewhere else on earth it's not supposed to be?

The oil is biodegradable. Very biodegradable actually. All you need is oxygen.

In deep water there isn't much oxygen, and when it coats shores only the top layer degrades (so it takes some time). But if you can spread it out it will all be gone.

And once degraded it leaves no residue at all.

I've always wondered why they don't just intersect the relief wells with the original well closer to the surface (don't have to drill as much). Is there a technical reason for why they don't do that?

They want to do something called a "Bottom Kill" vs. a "Top Kill". So you have to be at the bottom of the well.

A top kill doesn't always work, but a bottom kill is pretty guaranteed.

The oil pushes whatever material you inject up. So you want to be at the bottom so the material fills the entire pipe.

That's a good question. I assumed it was because there is a sleeve pipe that goes way down and they want to intersect below that.

I'm actually pretty amazed that they seem to be able navigate the drill well enough to hit a pipe that deep in the earth.

My uncle (blacksmith/inventor) is pretty certain that step 1 (cutting the pipe) was a mistake, as he had a solution (which he e-mailed to BP, which of course ignored it) which involved the pipe (and a clamp).

OTOH he doesn't have data on the exact pressures and forces involved, so BP probably had far better information on which to act. (and it's far easier to be an armchair engineer!)

The pressure of the oil at the leak is 3500 psi.

It is coming out of a 20" dia pipe.

3.1415 * 10^2 * 3500 = ~550 tons of force, about the weight of a 200ft ship

Then throw in a gas/oil 2-phase fluid with different viscosities and varying temperature -- it is not an easy problem to solve

Some good technical info here: http://www.greendump.net/the-oil-drum/deepwater-oil-spill-th...

Deleted comment

The pressure at 5000 ft under the ocean is roughly 2000psi relative to atmospheric pressure. 3500psi is the difference between the oil pressure and the pressure at the sea floor.

Thanks, I'm passing the link and the information to my uncle right now (and I'll ask him for the details of his proposed solution :) )

I can't believe the DIY'ers really think BP is filing their submissions anywhere but the "circular file".

However sometimes when I watch the "oil cam" I secretly wish to see someone in some kind of DIY "iron man" deep-diving outfit suddenly appear and walk over to the pipe and start fixing it themselves, lol.

Maybe BP should have crowd sourced this problem. Publish all of the data that its engineers have access to. Maybe even offer a prize for a working solution.

Something like the Goldcorp Challenge maybe? http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/59/mcewen.html

Was his solution to crimp the pipe?

The pressure differential between the oil and the water is pretty low (20k barrels/day isn't that much for a pipe that large) so crimping wouldn't require much more energy than bending a pipe without any flow.

However, I don't know if there are ROV attachments that are strong enough and whether there was the required access.

The other problem is that a crimp probably won't result in a complete seal. I don't know if there was room for multiple crimps or their cumulative effect.

On the other hand, crimps would have reduced the flow while the relief well is being drilled.

The other problem with crimps is that they may make it impossible to do other things.

"BP constructed a four-story containment dome" - keyword they "constructed", didn't have ready made.

Clearly this is taking so long because there is absolutely no preperation, these guys are following a manual and throwing mud against the wall.

Our gov't stimulous throws untold millions out into stimulous programs that offer little or no value, hopefully some bright gov't lacky decides to throw some R&D money into DARPA or otherwise to build better containment systems in the future instead of relying on corporations who have a max $75m tab.

The whole thing makes me sick. Sorry for the rant.

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