
Top kill fails to plug leak - j_baker
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30spill.html?hp
======
seldo
BP knew for weeks in advance of the explosion that the well was unsafe, and
had deliberately dialled-down the federally-required tests they were running
on the well, which strongly suggests they knew it wouldn't pass the real
tests:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30rig.html>

This is not an engineering puzzle; good engineers in the oil industry have
been drilling much deeper wells than this for years:

<http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/magazine/15-09/mf_jackrig>
[http://factoidz.com/the-deepest-offshore-oil-rig-in-the-
worl...](http://factoidz.com/the-deepest-offshore-oil-rig-in-the-world-the-
perdido-spar/)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_platform#Deepest_oil_platfo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_platform#Deepest_oil_platforms)

This accident is the result of greed and a failure of regulation; an economic
and political problem. Once we have found the engineering solution to shut
down this well, the pressure to prevent it happening again must focus on
politics, not technology.

~~~
ojbyrne
But I thought regulation was always bad? Isn't that the consensus here?

~~~
seldo
I would love to hear the libertarian defence of a private enterprise's
accident that is putting thousands of people out of work and destroying an
entire coastline's worth of ecosystems.

~~~
andreyf
I'm not a libertarian, but I imagine a libertarian plan might include the
privatization of parts of the ocean and shoreline. When an spill like this
happens, BP can then be sued for violating the rights of the owners of the
clean ocean surrounding the rig, and the damage they've done to the shoreline.
As long as the shoreline is public property, they can get away with convincing
senators and bureaucrats that they'll spend $x on cleanup, donate $y to their
campaigns, and that's that. If the cleanliness of the ocean/shoreline were
privatized (those private rights enforced by courts), the threat of a lawsuit
would lead to both more responsible pre-accident risk assessment on behalf of
BP and a more responsible cleanup strategy.

~~~
jonknee
What happens when the firm that destroys the coast simply goes out of business
afterwards? All the profits they made before the recklessness came to roost
has been funneled to shareholders around the world.

~~~
riffer
Not a problem, just require firms that have the potential to inflict
substantial costs on the rest of society to carry insurance against such a
catastrophe. The pricing mechanism on the insurance will act as an incentive
to minimize the real risk to society.

~~~
MichaelSalib
Sure! BP could just get an insurance policy from a reputable insurance
provider like...AIG. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, a reputable
insurance company like AIG would never, ever, ever offer policies for complex
products that it did not fully understand for prices so low that it couldn't
cover the risks involved. Insurance company officials would never ever ever
cut lots of fundamentally unsound deals in exchange for big bonuses. And even
if they did, such behavior could never blow up and eliminate a few trillion
dollars of value in a massive economic collapse. That's totally absurd.

Really now, this "solution" boils down to "assume the existence of insurance
companies that act radically differently from any insurance companies we have
experience with"...tis much like "now, assume a can opener".

------
gometro33
As interesting of a problem as this is, I don't quite understand how a) BP and
other oil companies aren't _required_ to have solved it prior to drilling and
b) after more than a month of the world watching, all they could come up with
was a solution that _might_ work.

I'm inclined to call to question the caliber of the engineer s working to
resolve the leak. Maybe I'm being too harsh?

EDIT: To clarify point (a), I would have assumed that oil rigs would be
required to build-in some sort of kill-switch in the event that even the
smallest part of the process didn't go as planned.

~~~
j_baker
They did build in a kill-switch, but it failed. To be fair to the engineers,
this is the first time they've encountered a leak at 5000 feet below the
ocean.

~~~
jsz0
I appreciate how much of a challenge those conditions must be but I still
don't understand why they were so unprepared to fix a leak. Couldn't a 5,000ft
leak have been simulated by a computer or in a lab environment? It seems like
they're just throwing untested solutions at the problem hoping something will
work. With the amount of money these oil companies make there is no excuse to
not be fully prepared.

~~~
j_baker
I'm sure they did run computer simulations. However, this is the first time
they've had to _physically_ stop the leak.

~~~
mkramlich
Good point. However, I think it should not have been the first time they had
to stop a _physical_ leak. They could have carried out experiments, at the
same depth, with the same set of equipment. Except not under emergency
conditions.

------
matt1
I've been reading many of the news articles about the leak, but most seem to
stray away from the long term effects of the leak if it's not fixed soon. If
the engineers don't stop the leak within, say, a month, what kind of
ecological damage can we expect? What about three months? A year? Longer? Is
there a chance that it will just "run out" anytime soon?

~~~
ars
I've been wondering that too, and the best answer I have is to look at the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill>

It spilled for 10 months! At that spill was 2 to 6 times worse in terms of
barrels per day.

The only difference was that it took 2 months to reach the US coast, so we
were a bit more prepared for it.

I have not yet read about the long term effects. But my quick skimming did not
come up with anything major. (Just short term effects.)

And no, it won't run out anytime soon.

~~~
jbooth
Don't quote that barrels per day figure too readily, the barrels per day from
the BP spill figure is based on.. BP's estimate. I'd double the estimate just
on general principles.

~~~
ars
I did. That's why I said "2 to 6".

~~~
jbooth
Fair nuff

------
vaksel
they tried all these retarded ideas back in the 70s with the Ixtoc oil spill
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill>

the only thing that worked was drilling the relief well

I bet the reason they are doing these retarded ideas while they drill the
relief well is to make people think that something is being done

~~~
brianobush
Well to a non-oil expert, they seem to have some merit. To me, the execution
seems flawed.

~~~
vrode
All businesses work this way to day, but only few has such a high risk. What
BP did there was practically a 50/50 game of chance, and they've lost. It
seems that in the shadow of profit, the risk becomes transparent. Sometimes
other risks, like 'losing market value' seem more real than the risk of
bursting such well. Maybe it is because economists are in charge and their
lack of technical expertise, makes the technical risk less real.

------
ErrantX
It's not too surprising. Sad, but not surprising.

Yesterday I sat and read up on the past examples of this happening. It's
hardly a big field of literature but the overriding result seems to be it
takes a _long_ time to fix these things.

The one thing that hacks me off is the way the us govt is jumping up and down
banning this and questioning that. Clearly at some point we need to assess
what occured and set out blame where appropriate - but it seems to me right
now we should quit the politcal posturing and focus solely on stopping the
leak.

~~~
jbooth
Which parts of the us govt, specifically? Questioning or banning what?

~~~
ErrantX
Obama has banned deepwater drilling (I can buy that at a stretch, but I'm not
convinced he's done it for the "right reasons") and the Senate is already
hearing testimony.

~~~
jbooth
Ok, so you seriously don't think temporarily banning deepwater drilling is
reasonable, given the circumstances?

~~~
ErrantX
It might be reasonable - we aren't experts so it's impossible to know if this
incident is part of a wider risk. But this big thing about banning it till
2011 is political posturing. Suspend things, let the experts review and decide
on the safety, then make a decision.

~~~
jbooth
Let's say the experts do a 6 month review, starting today. That takes us to
11/30/10.

2011 is totally unreasonable?

------
staunch
It is time for Plan C: <http://trueslant.com/juliaioffe/2010/05/04/nuke-that-
slick/>

~~~
dasht
It's an interesting question, that one, isn't it? I don't think "nuke" is the
operative word because they would want a tiny nuke so "conventional"
explosives might do. From what I hear Prof. Bea and some other sources saying
I infer that the real danger of that approach is that it can make things much,
much worse. (Namely, while it might collapse the pipe, it might also create a
large total volume capacity of escape paths for the oil, spread over a larger
area. There is already a new leak from the sea-bed 400ft away.).

~~~
tlack
This is a serious question that I've been wondering. You seem like you might
know. The drill goes very deep below the sea floor into the earth to find the
pocket of oil, right? Why can't they just collapse the hole they dug using
explosives on the sea floor and allow it to close in on itself? Surely it is
fragile if it's so deep/hard to drill..

~~~
fnid2
What if it creates lots of little holes all around the area and the oil
continues to leak. Now you have a bigger problem on your hands -- stopping
_lots_ of leaks a mile below the surface instead of just one.

------
tmsh
So I looked at this link (via the above) from the WSJ:

<http://bit.ly/cqsUZV>

Anybody know why digging a hole say 500 feet deep, 50 feet side by side with
the gushing well and putting some c4 in there wouldn't work?

At any rate, I read this:

<http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=158297>

Particularly, the non-nuclear option. I think they should run models and truly
consider it. Perhaps they need to run models and then f-ing blow that up (if
the models say that the resulting rubble will sufficiently re-cover the well).

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KkhbbX4AcU>

They could assemble a massive amount of dirt around the well. Create a large
circular mound, and then just collapse it from underneath. That's what I would
do. And I didn't even stay a Holiday Inn last night. Jk. I'm sure everyone has
an opinion. I couldn't find a place to really say anything here:

<http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/546759/>

So I posted this. Anyway...

~~~
earnubs
1\. The leak is at 1,500m. Doing anything is difficult and dangerous.

2\. The well has a measured depth of +10,000m, the pressure acting on the
reservoir is ejecting the hydrocarbons with a very large force.

------
rjett
This might be a naive question, but why are they still estimating how much oil
is leaking? If they have pumped x amount of heavy mud in which temporarily
capped the leak but was subsequently blown out because of the pressure of the
escaping oil, couldn't they determine the exact pressure that the oil is
coming out, and if they know the size of the opening, a flow rate?

~~~
proee
The pipe is leaking both oil and gas. The ratio of the two is unknown and
therefore makes calculating the oil flow difficult.

------
wsbail29
My layman's idea for stopping the leak:

Insert a drill pipe into the well with some sort of expandable yet sturdy bag
tucked into the end. Once the pipe is fairly deep inside the well, pump a
dense liquid into the pipe expanding the bag similar to an angioplasty
procedure. Then cap the well from the top once the flow is stopped or reduced
significantly.

Another similar solution would be to attach high explosives to the drill pipe
and collapse the well from deep inside.

Have these approaches been considered?

~~~
brown9-2
I think that a problem with this idea is that the "expandable yet sturdy bag"
would have to be able to withstand great pressure, not just of the oil itself
but to survive a mile underneath the ocean.

------
philfreo
You may want to follow BP's PR Twitter... <http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr> ;)

------
erlanger
Hacker news!

~~~
campnic
This sad attempt at questioning the merit of the article is truly part of the
problem with this oil leak. We're talking about one of the greatest ecological
disasters in the history of the United States and people seem uninterested.
It's pretty sickening. For another perspective see
[http://www.businessinsider.com/matthew-simmons-dylan-
ratigan...](http://www.businessinsider.com/matthew-simmons-dylan-ratigan-
deepwater-2010-5)

~~~
erlanger
Well I certainly knew nothing of these developments until they appeared on
this website. This is where I go for national news.

