The Dead Zone (or, BP and the Oil Well That Keeps on Giving)

[Husar]

I, for one, am furious about "We couldn't locate the page."

Hmm, yeah, seems to have disappeared, how about this then?

And here's a related one from CNN.

I'm not an expert on that subject but ignoring the problems for years if not decades seems worse to me than having an accident and then trying your best to solve the problem.
Of course when it happens close to the US it creates more outrage than someone ruining a big region in Africa or is that just Amnesty and CNN turning a non-issue into an oil spill?

[Ronin]

I don't get that. He didn't cause it; only with hindsight is there any talk of the government somehow preventing this. BP and the rig operators caused it, and they're doing about all they can. Except for the people who died, of course.

This stupid reporting about Obama somehow being to blame for the long cleanup is ridiculous; worse yet it encourages more stupidity, overreactions by the government to show they're doing something.

CR

There seems to be some apetite in turning this into Obama's Katrina.....the fact that this is BP's problem and not the government's like the hurricane was won´t deter the mudslingers...

like it was said above...if today's move doesn´t work there is a definite solution for this...the problem is that it will take 2 months to put into place....at god knows what price in terms of the enviroment of the area...

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. ...It's the only way to be sure

[Crazed Rabbit]

I read a detailed article in the Wall St Journal, already linked in the thread by Hosakawa Tito, and it seems BP made a series of decisions based on reducing the time to completion that reduced the safety margin. Taking more time to put in better safeguards, it seems, could well have avoided the whole mess. So it could well be that people have died, and the rest of the oil industry that doesn't screw up will be subject to a bunch more regulations again because BP wanted to do things cheaper and faster, plus this time there's massive ecological damage.

Of course it won't be until the US Chemical Safety Board issues it's report (months from now; they write thorough reports) that we'll really know what happened and why.

CR

[Beskar]

and people argued against regulation, when it would have prevented this happening.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

and people argued against regulation, when it would have prevented this happening.

A prohibition on drilling would have prevented it. Regulation? Possibly, but possibly not. Remember, you can only establish regulations covering forseeable problems. I strongly suspect that coping with a major explosion such as occurred wasn't really considered and certainly wouldn't have been rated likely enough to warrant meticulous regulation.

Regulation has its place, but mostly its to prevent repeat occurrences.

[Shaka_Khan]

Loony stuff like nukes?

What if nuking it makes the hole bigger?

[gaelic cowboy]

What if nuking it makes the hole bigger?

The pressure at that depth would force good chuck of explosion down I would say the hole would be squashed flat and blocked.

[Lemur]

Looks as though the top kill did not work. Dang it.

Typically, you know pretty quickly if a top kill works. BP has been pumping the kill since Wednesday, trying a number of tactics, including junk shots. Their announcement last night that it would be at least through the weekend before if they know the results of the kill doesn't ring true to me. Certainly they know a lot more than what they are saying.

Recall that a top kill will work only if enough back pressure can be generated in the leaking wellhead to allow the pumped mud to overcome the pressure from the well, turn the flow around, and then build enough hydrostatic head to overcome the formation pressure. The junk shot was designed to do just that, but apparently BP had decided to try just mud for the first effort. I believe that the high rate that BP pumped the mud washed out the cracks in the riser, actually reducing back pressure. The cracks in the riser are where you saw the mud flowing if you watched the live feed of the top kill the last couple of days. As a side note, I do find it interesting that the BP feed no longer includes the bent riser view of the last couple of days,and now looks like the end of the riser where the riser insertion tool had been used previously.

Because of the washed out riser cracks, the bridging material pumped in for the junk shot probably can't clog up the riser and BOP enough to overcome the flowing pressure and allow mud to go down the well, so the mud they are pumping is likely just going into the kill and chokes valves and coming out the top of the BOP.

-edit-

It's official.

[Lemur]

[I]t seems BP made a series of decisions based on reducing the time to completion that reduced the safety margin.

More info is emerging that trends toward that conclusion.

Internal documents from BP show that there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig [...] The problems involved the well casing and the blowout preventer, which are considered critical pieces in the chain of events that led to the disaster on the rig.

The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of “well control.” And as far back as 11 months ago, it was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer.

On June 22, for example, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.

“This would certainly be a worst-case scenario,” Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. “However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur.”

[Crazed Rabbit]

Apparently the next plan is to have robots saw off part of the pipe and fit some sort of cover on. The danger, of course, is that if that fails then the whole pipe is opened up and leaking.

I wonder how BP's going to pay for all the damage. I have heard of rumors (and just rumors) going around the refining industry that BP will sell off their US refineries.

More info is emerging that trends toward that conclusion.

In refining accidents and the like, the answer is nearly always one thing; human error.

CR

[HoreTore]

A prohibition on drilling would have prevented it. Regulation? Possibly, but possibly not. Remember, you can only establish regulations covering forseeable problems. I strongly suspect that coping with a major explosion such as occurred wasn't really considered and certainly wouldn't have been rated likely enough to warrant meticulous regulation.

Regulation has its place, but mostly its to prevent repeat occurrences.

Tougher envorimental restrictions on american cars would've prevented this, as that's the only way to get a prohibition on drilling.

If we were all driving electric cars, we wouldn't see things like this.

[gaelic cowboy]

Tougher envorimental restrictions on american cars would've prevented this, as that's the only way to get a prohibition on drilling.

If we were all driving electric cars, we wouldn't see things like this.

How so????? most lecky comes from dirty fossil fuels

[HoreTore]

How so????? most lecky comes from dirty fossil fuels

That's your own fault for not building enough hydro-electricity.

Here, almost all the electricity comes from hydro-electricity. Which is completely clean.

EDIT: And at any rate, even if the electricity comes from a coal plant, an electric car would still be better. It costs about a dollar for enough electricity to drive some 100km. Think you can do that with a combustion engine...?

[gaelic cowboy]

That's your own fault for not building enough hydro-electricity.

Here, almost all the electricity comes from hydro-electricity. Which is completely clean.

Your clearly know nothing about Hydro-Power it's not suitable everywhere

[gaelic cowboy]

EDIT: And at any rate, even if the electricity comes from a coal plant, an electric car would still be better. It costs about a dollar for enough electricity to drive some 100km. Think you can do that with a combustion engine...?

Petrol is still more efficient way to generate energy to drive the car, electricity will not generate enough charge to match a full tank of petrol in speed or distance

[HoreTore]

Your clearly know nothing about Hydro-Power it's not suitable everywhere

Is it my fault your country didn't have the sense to get yourself some big mountains and some proper rivers....?

Petrol is still more efficient way to generate energy to drive the car, electricity will not generate enough charge to match a full tank of petrol in speed or distance

Depends on where you're driving. An electric car is more than sufficient for what 90% of us drive in a day.

[gaelic cowboy]

Is it my fault your country didn't have the sense to get yourself some big mountains and some proper rivers....?

obviously they were stolen by the Vikings so we got Brian Boru to kick your asses

[Crazed Rabbit]

That's your own fault for not building enough hydro-electricity.

Here, almost all the electricity comes from hydro-electricity. Which is completely clean.

EDIT: And at any rate, even if the electricity comes from a coal plant, an electric car would still be better. It costs about a dollar for enough electricity to drive some 100km. Think you can do that with a combustion engine...?

In Washington state the stupid hippies got a referendum passed that classified hydro-power (which we've got a lot of, but the hippies dislike it because it's harder for some fish) as a non-renewable energy source. So instead electric companies will have to invest in much less efficient wind and solar power to get the renewable energy quota.

Oh, and as for what I can do with a combustion engine; drive more than 100 miles in a day. Turns out that's quite useful in America.

CR

[HoreTore]

Oh, and as for what I can do with a combustion engine; drive more than 100 miles in a day. Turns out that's quite useful in America.

CR

Most of the worlds population live in big cities, and we do not care about that.

And what's stopping you from having two cars; one electric for driving short distances, and one petrol/hybrid for longer trips...?

[Ser Clegane]

And what's stopping you from having two cars; one electric for driving short distances, and one petrol/hybrid for longer trips...?

Are you also getting free cars in Norway?

[Tellos Athenaios]

[HoreTore]

Are you also getting free cars in Norway?

I'm sorry, do you live in a third world country?

[ajaxfetish]

Nope, just one where cars cost big money.

Ajax

[HoreTore]

Nope, just one where cars cost big money.

Ajax

Heck, even I had two cars when I lived with my ex. On a student loan. And I live in a country where cars are at least twice as expensive as in yours. Get real, we can all afford both an electric car and a petrol car - assuming you can afford a car in the first place.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Second try; for some reason the forum/internets ended up eating my previous post. @Mods: please do not delete the empty post, because it points to a problem with the forum software -- the forum should've rejected my empty post for not containing the minimum of required characters. I'll tell Tosa in a minute.

Petrol (internal combustion) engines are in fact terribly inefficient compared to electric engines -- both at delivering speed and at delivering torque. Diesels are significantly better than petrol engines, but still not nearly as good as electric engines. The one thing petrol and diesel engines have going for them is that you can store a lot of energy in a relatively small form-factor: say a car-tank. This is much more difficult with batteries or capacitators (much the same): it is not possible to store those amounts of energy in this fashion in a similar volume.

Incidentally diesel power locomotives are usually a hybrid: diesel powered generators to run the electric engines which run the train.

[HoreTore]

Second try; for some reason the forum/internets ended up eating my previous post. @Mods: please do not delete the empty post, because it points to a problem with the forum software -- the forum should've rejected my empty post for not containing the minimum of required characters. I'll tell Tosa in a minute.

Petrol (internal combustion) engines are in fact terribly inefficient compared to electric engines -- both at delivering speed and at delivering torque. Diesels are significantly better than petrol engines, but still not nearly as good as electric engines. The one thing petrol and diesel engines have going for them is that you can store a lot of energy in a relatively small form-factor: say a car-tank. This is much more difficult with batteries or capacitators (much the same): it is not possible to store those amounts of energy in this fashion in a similar volume.

Incidentally diesel power locomotives are usually a hybrid: diesel powered generators to run the electric engines which run the train.

Indeed!

And who on earth said that you had to buy that Audi instead of a Prius, eh?

[gaelic cowboy]

And who on earth said that you had to buy that Audi instead of a Prius, eh?

Why Jeremy Clarkson of course who else?????

[Crazed Rabbit]

Most of the worlds population live in big cities, and we do not care about that.

And what's stopping you from having two cars; one electric for driving short distances, and one petrol/hybrid for longer trips...?

You mentioned America:

Tougher envorimental restrictions on american cars would've prevented this, as that's the only way to get a prohibition on drilling.

And in America, even in large cities, it matters. And buying two cars because one is useless for long trips is stupid.

CR

[HoreTore]

You mentioned America:


And in America, even in large cities, it matters. And buying two cars because one is useless for long trips is stupid.

CR

....And could you please explain why you can't buy a hybrid....?

And why on earth is it stupid to have a second car you can use back and forth to work and the grocery store at almost zero cost...? most families already have two cars, one of which is usually a small one, like a Micra, yaris or Corsa. I see no reason why that one can't be replaced by an electric car.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Electric cars at this time are:
1. Too expensive compared to the petrol models.
2. The few I've seen are ugly little tin cans that most people in the US don't want to drive.
3. The electric grid to support, and the maintenance facilities to sustain them is non-existent.