

'Top kill' method 'slows BP oil leak' in Gulf of Mexico - pierrefar
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/us_and_canada/10174861.stm

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aero142
So, BP wouldn't allow anyone other than them to inspect the leak and give an
estimate of the flow rate, the 5,000 number is "unreliable", but they know for
sure that it is less than before. I hope it's true but mark me down as
skeptical.

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gjm11
The actual headline says "slows", not "stops". (Has it changed?)

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pierrefar
Yes it has. When I submitted it, I just removed the "BBC News" prefix in the
title and nothing else.

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_delirium
The short slideshow at the bottom of the article is one of the better concise
explanations I've seen of the process.

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jackfoxy
If this story in WSJ is proves accurate, BP has a lot of culpability.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870471700457526...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704717004575268302434395796.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_news)

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joezydeco
There's some other unsubstantiated stories that Schlumberger pulled their guys
off the rig just before it blew up:

[http://adropofrain.net/2010/05/rumor-schlumberger-exits-
deep...](http://adropofrain.net/2010/05/rumor-schlumberger-exits-deep-horizon-
hours-before-blowout/)

~~~
gruseom
That's interesting. I worked for Schlumberger for a couple of years. They are
a good company in their core business of oil services (their software division
is horrible, but that's another story). They particularly emphasize safety. I
have no idea whether the story you linked to is true, but if the chief SLB
person on site made a decision that his people were at risk, it would be
consistent with the company's culture to get them out of there at their own
expense.

~~~
joezydeco
I've been looking, but there has to be a list of who was on the platform
(survivors and deceased) when it exploded.

EDIT: There _are_ links that confirm SLB folk were off the rig, but SLB isn't
saying it was any kind of emergency evacuation at this point. It was a
"scheduled flight".

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AndrewO
Anyone know why this wasn't tried earlier? Lower estimated chance of success
than other previous strategies? Would have precluded other options if it
failed? Some other kind of complication?

~~~
dasht
I'm not an expert. I'm just passing along what I hear Prof. Bea of UC Berkeley
saying (and that makes intuitive sense to me).

One of the big risks of the top-kill procedure is a kind of "you push in here,
it pops out there" problem. There's a big pipe down into the ground, right?
It's constructed in segments. We have _limited_ amounts of information about
what condition it's in.

There is risk that they throw mud down, that does indeed slow or stop the
current flows, but the flows find a new path busting through the pipes or the
joints between segments - and the net result is a flow just as bad or worse as
before the top kill but even harder to fix.

That they've only so far "slowed" the flow doesn't give me much encouragement
yet. Both plots ("it works" and "it fails and makes things worse") start that
way.

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mawhidby
Here's a link to Adm. Allen's talk with NPR referenced in the article.
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-
way/2010/05/there_are_indica...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-
way/2010/05/there_are_indications_top_kill.html)

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marltod
queue Fox News to say that Obama should have insisted that this be done 4
weeks ago.

~~~
Tichy
I must admit, I don't understand this. What do US presidents, or for what it's
worth, US governments, know about how to stop oil spills 5000 feet below the
surface of the sea?

What reason is there to assume that BP is not trying the best it can to stop
the spill, and to them being the best experts on the subject?

Also, hasn't the government called in a panel of independent experts already?

~~~
jbooth
It's simple. When things are going well, everybody spends all their time
calling government the problem, cutting funding, shredding regulations and
defanging any government enforcement agencies.

Then when things go bad, everyone's pissed that the government isn't
omnipotent.

~~~
anamax
> It's simple.

You're forgetting that Obama and the Dems campaigned on "we're far more
competent than Bush and the Repubs. If you elect us, sea levels will fall,
[etc]."

It's sort of like the "huge financial firms aren't giving money to Obama, that
money comes from their executives" argument. While true, you never hear it
about money going to Repubs.

~~~
jbooth
Yeah, and the Republicans campaigned on "all you need to know about energy is
drill baby drill".

So do you think the government should have done more to prevent this? Or that
this isn't a big deal and that the private sector is handling it fine?

~~~
anamax
> So do you think the government should have done more to prevent this? Or
> that this isn't a big deal and that the private sector is handling it fine?

mu.

I don't think that the govt could have done more to prevent this without
causing other, more significant problems.

It is a big deal. I think that the private sector is doing a better job of
fixing the leak than govt would have.

I note that govt had reasonable plans for dealing with the effects of leaks
yet didn't bother. (For example, burning, which should have been started on
day 1 and would have helped significantly, was pre-cleared in the 1990s for
exactly that reason. Note that it never happened in any meaningful way.) It's
unclear why I should blame the private sector for that.

~~~
jbooth
Well, fair enough. It does actually sound like most people involved are doing
their best job, except for the safety inspectors who let the thing get built
that way in the first place.

~~~
anamax
> It does actually sound like most people involved are doing their best job,
> except for the safety inspectors who let the thing get built that way in the
> first place.

Not at all. The cleanup and reaction people failed horribly, and most of them
were in govt.

~~~
jbooth
Citation needed.

