
Is the BP Gusher Unstoppable? - mbateman
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/06/worst-already-true-BP-well-now-unstoppable
======
btilly
Short summary, the integrity of the well seems to be compromised below the
layer we can reach. Therefore attempting to cap it will just cause it to leak
out the sea floor below anything we can reach. The only choice is to let the
oil out and try to catch it. However this will erode the already compromised
well structure.

At that point it is a race between erosion and the relief wells, which
hopefully will relieve the pressure on the existing well.

If the relief wells fail to get there in time, there is a real possibility of
the sea floor collapsing and letting the entire oil pocket out. The potential
oil spill if that happens could be up to 2.5 billion barrels.

~~~
nitrogen
If the sea floor above the pocket is so fragile, what was to stop this
disaster from occurring naturally some day, without having ever drilled?

~~~
jonah
From my reading, it's flow that's causing the erosion. We've punctured the
dam.

Consider an earth dam holding in a lake. As long as the water's sitting behind
the dam, not much is going to happen but as soon as a little crack appears or
a bit of water begins pouring over the top, it starts eroding - carrying away
bits of the dam. As the hole gets bigger, the flow increases which accelerates
the erosion.

Now picture the oil eroding a hole in the casing and surrounding
rock/silt/etc.

Here's a visual from a recent _natural_ disaster:
[http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/landslide_lake_in_p...](http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/landslide_lake_in_pakistan.html#photo38)

~~~
iterationx
74,000 psi can certainly cause erosion... :(

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jpdbaugh
BP definitely understands, better than anyone else who pretends to what is
going on. The problem is that what is really going on is incredibly scary
proposition. The truth is that from the beginning the only real way to fix
this is with relief wells which they are in the process of drilling. The
problem with the relief well is that it takes about 6 months to implement. Do
you really expect BP to come out with that to the American people?

I have this on good authority by a petroleum engineer in a rival oil company.
Believe me or not but I think that the people in the oil industry probably no
better about how to fix this problem than Obama or anyone else in government
who are just going to get in the way. First, I do not at all agree with
offshore drilling, however it bothers me that people assume that BP is holding
out or that this is really an easy thing to fix. They aren't because letting
the disaster continue will destroy their company and it isn't easy considering
they are composed of people who studied petroleum engineering and actually no
what they are doing. Johnny's silly, uninformed ideas aren't going to work
either. Hell, the petroleum engineer I know also said that Russia's idea of
nuking the leak would be the quickest way to fix but the government, or sane
people, wouldn't allow that.

The bottom line is that we should never have been drilling in the first place.
This spill is terrible but it happened and we have to deal with it. It bothers
me though that people really think BP isn't doing the best they can and has
the best people in the world working on this. The entire oil industry is
helping them. The government and other entities should worry about supporting
them and helping the people affected by this cope with the fallout. Leave the
technical details to the professionals because everyone else ideas are
uninformed, will slow things down, and will not work. Only a relief well will
and thats 4 months away so why not worry about helping the people of the golf?
The truly sad thing is that Americans will still get up tomorrow and drive
their gas guzzling SUVs 2 miles to work instead of riding bike and those
bullet trains and public transportation efforts are still decades away...

~~~
Tekhne
> ... Americans will still get up tomorrow and drive their gas guzzling SUVs
> ...

Let's say that I'm an American with a gas guzzling SUV. For the sake of
discussion, what would you suggest are my better alternatives (taking into
account the money I've already invested in the SUV)? How would those
alternatives help fix the current BP problem? I'm not trying to be contrarian.
I would like to start a discussion here.

~~~
jpdbaugh
I don't think Americans really need to do anything personally. I think the
primary issue is the lack of public transportation here in America. We need
leadership on this from the top so that we can catch up to the rest of the
world. You can go anywhere in Europe in hours on a train. I know America is
big but we are still (perhaps) the richest country in the world and we can
implement a quality public transportation system. It would even help the
economy by providing jobs, just like all of the infrastructure projects of the
new deal did.

Besides public transportation though, just working on our infrastructure would
help with fuel saving. Sitting in traffic all day doesn't help MPG. Hell,
sometimes I wish I had an SUV for some of the roads here in Pittsburgh, with
the potholes its like I am driving through in Iraq. Also, my beef isn't really
with all SUVs. I mean the Traverse gets what 33/mpg? I am talking about the
people who drive Escalades to and from work and don't haul anyone around.

~~~
Tekhne
Yea, I for one would welcome fast, comfortable, ubiquitous trains. Also, it
would be nice if America could really embrace ideas like work from home or
Results Only Work Environment in jobs where that makes sense. In my current
job, there's no reason I couldn't do 98% of my work from home, except that
management is scared that they'd lose control, which is really ridiculous on
many levels. This is a new era and some organizations are managing people
using techniques from 50 or more years ago. Techniques that have been
scientifically shown to be a bad idea in certain jobs.

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starkfist
This MotherJones article is entirely based on an anonymous comment on another
blog, which is sort of interesting in and of itself.

~~~
freescale
And that an article in MotherJones based on an anonymous comment on another
blog is currently #2 on HackerNews is simply dispiriting.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Yep, especially since BP's presentation to Congress [1] would indicate that
that anonymous commenter doesn't have a complete understanding of what's going
on.

[1]:
[http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100527/BP.Presen...](http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100527/BP.Presentation.pdf)

~~~
melvin
Nothing that has occurred since the incident has given me the impression that
BP has a complete understanding of what's going on.

~~~
megablast
Or, more importantly, the willingness to admit that fact, or to admit the
truth. Initially they decried all the people who suggested the flow was much
larger than their estimates. Then, more and more sources come out suggesting
it. And just recently, they have admitted it might be true.

This seems to be modus operandi for companies these days. Deny everything,
then weeks later come up with your own sources suggesting exactly the same
thing, when the issue has died down.

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houseabsolute
Not so quick question: if this indeed does happen could more extraordinary
measures possibly fix the problem? For example:

    
    
        Bombs          Bombs
        \\      |      //
        --------|--------
        ########|########
    

Or is it basically oil ocean forever? And: how catastrophic of a situation is
this? Not, I would guess, an existential risk. Could it be measured in terms
of percentage of world GDP that will be lost trying to fix or mitigate the
symptoms? And if so, what approximate percentage would that be? Another nice
thing would be if it could be measured in terms of the overall historical
benefit of offshore drilling.

Edit: I'm not really suggesting bombs; that's just something off the top my
head. The main idea is that I want to know if there is any potential
mitigation if the story is true? And just how bad is it if there isn't?

~~~
thaumaturgy
I did a fair bit of research on the technical details of the Deepwater Horizon
disaster. I, too, wanted to know why "they" didn't do X, Y, or Z, so I decided
to find out. :-)

The first thing you need to know is that it's 5,000 feet from the surface of
the ocean to the ocean floor at the well, and then there's another 18,000 feet
of shaft below the ocean floor to the oil and gas reservoir. So, there's no
clear position from which explosives can be used to "seal" it. If explosives
were used, there's a pretty good chance it would blow up in our face, so to
speak -- not only would the gas ignite (making the process somewhat
unpredictable), but it would also likely create a huge number of microfissures
that would lead to an even bigger oil geyser.

How catastrophic is it? It's ... well, not to be dramatic, but if this doesn't
end up being one of the nastier long-term natural catastrophes of the next few
decades, then I shudder to imagine what's coming next. Not only is this
killing seabirds and mammals, it's also de-oxygenating a large portion of the
Gulf rather nicely.

If BP does stick to their commitment to pay for the whole thing, I expect that
they will file for bankruptcy next year. (In large part because their market
cap is dropping like a rock.)

This particular incident is sort of the perfect storm of conditions for an oil
disaster: it occurred at challenging depths, and when efforts have been made
to stop the leak at those depths, something has gone wrong each time to stall
or defeat the effort.

For further perspective: the US Navy's Seawolf class submarine has a crush
depth of approximately 3,000 feet. At that depth, you're dealing with around
2,000 psi of pressure, but that's not the nasty part: the gusher is estimated
to be at around 12,000 psi.

So, yeah. Explosives are probably not a wise idea here.

~~~
DannoHung
> How catastrophic is it? It's ... well, not to be dramatic, but if this
> doesn't end up being one of the nastier long-term natural catastrophes of
> the next few decades, then I shudder to imagine what's coming next. Not only
> is this killing seabirds and mammals, it's also de-oxygenating a large
> portion of the Gulf rather nicely.

Point of clarification, this is a man-made catastrophe.

~~~
pyre
It could have been an oversight, but I think that he also might have been
referring to the damage to the ecosystem (i.e. 'natural' as in that it's a
disaster that's affecting nature).

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codingthewheel
The largest two oil spills in recorded history:

Lakeview Gusher: around 9 million barrels, est. Gulf War Spill: around 6 to 11
million barrels

Deepwater Horizon has a ways to go.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill#Largest_oil_spills>

~~~
yardie
#1 On land, relatively easy to cleanup, but expensive

#2 On land, relatively easy to cleanup, but expensive

#3 5000 ft underwater....expensive

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jurjenh
So the direct consequence currently is that millions of barrels are venting
directly into the gulf. I'm not too clued up on crude oil, but as far as I'm
aware, oil is less dense than water, thus rises. Gulf currents will dissipate
this as seen from aerial photos, so without containment, oil will end up in a
lot more places than just the gulf.

How is the oil flow being contained, and how effective is this - remembering
there may be billions of barrels to be contained...

What percentage of the oil will be sub-surface - a lot harder to contain. And
how can this be contained?

What are the flow-on effects of a possible sea-floor collapse and how much of
an impact will this have on the structure of the gulf?

And then the overriding question of all - is it worth it?

If there is a relatively easy way to extract crude from the water, it may in
fact be more economically feasible to extract the oil by destroying the well
than to repair the well itself. Of course, none of this is taking into account
the environmental impact...

~~~
itgoon
The problem with the underwater plumes is that they can't be contained. While
you may have the image of an underwater oilslick, it isn't - the oil can be
measured in parts per million (you might not even notice if you had a glass of
it).

The problem with those plumes is that bacteria eats the oil, and then breeds.
Those organisms use up the oxygen in the water, leaving a dead zone unfit for
life. There was already a decent sized dead zone from the Mississippi, but
this has the potential to dwarf it.

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ck2
2.5 Million gallons per day. Years after the news stops reporting it in a
couple months, the wildlife will never recover.

Relief wells must be made MANDATORY or we've learned nothing and it will
happen again.

BP's deepwater Atlantis is poised to do the same thing in our lifetimes.

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viraptor
Ok - I haven't been following this event that much so far. Can someone tell me
why the simplest solution of limiting the leak effects is not possible -
namely building a large tunnel going from the surface to the leak point,
making a space where the oil can safely leak, while it's being transported
away? Is it the depth? area? size of the flow?

~~~
brown9-2
The leak is 5000 feet below the surface of the ocean.

Water is heavy. 5000 feet of it is a whole lot of pressure that such a tunnel
would have to withstand.

The "simplest solution" is often one that is completely impractical given the
facts.

~~~
giardini
No, No! Neither "tunnel" nor well need to withstand the pressure of 5000 feet
of water. Reason is that the well (tunnel) is always filled with either water
or drilling mud (roughly the same density as water) so the inside and outside
pressure on the drilling pipe are the same. The pressure differences are not
significant until/unless drilling into an oil or gas pocket. Even then the
pocket must have a pressure significantly greater than that of the 5000 feet
of water to be any problem. But that's what blowout preventers are for.

~~~
SapphireSun
Don't forget that it's not only the lateral pressure you have to deal with,
you have to have pipes that can not crumple under their own weight and
simultaneously withstand extremely high torques due to ocean currents.

~~~
ramchip
Is this a fact based on actual calculation/experiments, or your personal
theory?

I don't think the solution is practical in this case for various other
reasons, but the fact that offshore platforms exist incites me to think that
long, underwater pipes can in fact resist ocean currents. They will also be
naturally buoyant so long as there's enough air pockets in the material (or
just floaters as the other person posted).

~~~
SapphireSun
Personal theory. I should have said that in the original comment.

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jim_dot
this post seems to suggest that Dougr's ideas that oil is escaping into the
surrounding rock are wrong: <http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6611#more>

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quizbiz
What does a well look like under water?

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sosorry
What if we just sank something really big and made of concrete on top of the
oil leak, like a cruise ship or an aircraft carrier? Just something really
really heavy, and wide enough to cover the hole by a large margin.

~~~
chronomex
I can't see that making a good enough seal with the seafloor to be a viable
solution.

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Jim_Neath
+1 for the use of the word "Gusher"

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russell
It may be much worse than we thought. The well pipe is nearing collapse under
the seabed and efforts to cap it from the top will eventually fail.

~~~
ars
Interesting how it went from a wild guess, to an article, then "may be", and
now "is nearing collapse" and "will fail".

Rumors.

~~~
mkramlich
Good point. But to be fair, a lot of what BP has seemed to be doing is making
guesses. Educated guesses, based on some observations and known facts. But
still, guesses just the same. At best, estimates.

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varjag
How about U.S. government finally uses some of it's many nukes for good of the
world?

No, not on BP headquarters, but blast it in proximity to kill the well?

