These are excellent questions. It is disappointing that so few cogent answers and ideas have come forth--from anywhere. Maybe half a dozen decent ideas, several dozen bad ones, and a host of irrelevant rants. In particular, we have no reliable dimensions or pressures, except for seawater pressure at that depth.

That #4 top cap that showed for a while on the video link was a step in the right direction, but insofar as I could see the details, it looked half-baked. (I could have seen things wrongly, but it looked like a cap with 2 or 3 relatively small taps off the top. That does not seem optimal.)

I'm not answering your questions cause I dont know. I do know this. It cant be this damn difficult to cure. It must be a bunch of beurocratic tape, face saving, table arguing, who's gonna get credit for saving the world bunch of overpaid lazy asses.

They never had a back up plan for this crap to happen? My God, it's not rocket science. If your gonna do somehting like that in the ocean, know what the hell your gonna do if somehitng screws up! Duhhhhh!!!! And the gov allows this? But hey, it's money. And lots of it. And who's gonna stand in the way of that?

It's deep as hell. How deep I dont know, but deep enuf that there's no light. So it's at least like 600ft? But still, they built the damn thing, so ya know they can play around down there.

I look at this thing and I start getting solution ideas. Looks like a fair deal of pressure pushing oil out. IDEA: Why not an over sized pipe with suction to just cover over the entire settup and then have tanker ships that it just dumps into the ships and the ships take it from there? At least while they take another 5 months to get thier thumbs out of their butts and come up with a real solution. Yes, I'm a mechanical designer, but cmon, it's not that freaking hard already. Not to the point that no one on the freakin planet cant solve this issue? And again, the gov. allowed em to do this to be built wihtout a back up plan if something stupid happens. I say stupid cause they knew this needed repair years ago. But repair is costly, stops production and takes time. And that costs money. Well, thier saving money now eh.........

I guess at least their not like Exxon where they just turned thier backs and said, "not our problem" and had to be sued millions because of it. Yes, it was the fault of a drunk captian. But, he worked for and was the ship of Exxon. I still boycott exxon for thier crap in Alaska

You won't answer our questions because you have no idea! I will buy Exxon or BP if the occasion arrives - that is not the route to punish them. Your rant makes no sense what so ever! If you don't know how deep it is then you have paid zero attention to the problem. What do you think they are doing except using drawing a substantial portion of the oil off to waiting vessels? Mechanical designer of what? Garbage cans?

Ha

I have never worked on oil pipe but have been in the Plumbing and Heating business all my short life and have work in all 4 corners of the work so here is my question am I the only one who see a bolted flange fitted on that pipe so the question is what would be preventing them from fitting a new flanged certainly its not the pressure coming from the pipe

Why can't they remove the defective bop and simply replace it? I understand there is considerable pressure there cut they cut of the pipie once qalready. stop the spill and make a usable well, Why NOT?