My Approach To The Oil Spill

your problem is not only expensive but time consuming, the time it would take to build and place the coffer dam would be months. The main issue right now is that there are plenty of options but BP is more concerned with maintaining a useable well than actually plugging the leak. Most of the other options available to them would render the well head inaccessable or cap the well to a point that it couldn't be uncapped and the billions of dollars of crude would only be attainable by drilling a new well.

Not true on trying to use the busted well.

They are already drilling diagonally with two new wells to relieve the pressure on the broken one. They will use those to draw the oil but they will take till, i think they said, August.

I myself have become suspicious that you are correct farmatt. It seems unbelievable on one hand, but the evidence of the actions taken supports your take.

I thought that I was being too simple, and seeing it all too simply, and have seen over and over the PSI figures, pictures of pipes, stories of pipes, top kill, funnel top hat, and cut off and reinstall of Pressure Blow Out, and just don't get it.

It has gone on already too long, and I'm for cutting the crap, and just dropping steel and gravel, and concrete on the site till oil stops comes out of the ocean floor with a hole in it.

I'd be making the robots and the engineers apply pressure to the wound with heavy things to make it stop bleeding now. Steel balls, hulks of steel ships, gravel, shaped concrete, nets, and duct tape.

This is an ecological disaster of epic proportions that is being handled as if it were of no particular consequence, fixable by money and payoffs to the aggrieved.

I'd now call BPs bluff and brinksmanship and take their robots and their staff and hire whomever I had too and make them stop it period.

Even if it was that the North Koreans practiced on the South Korean cruiser, before torpedoing the Trans ocean rig, I don't care. BP hasn't stopped it.

P.S. I am influenced by an unrelated interaction I had on the phone with BP in the past prior to the blowout.

It's always "too little, too late". They keep looking for the most cost effective solution and when that doesn't work, the next solution costs more and is still not enough. Look at the levies in New Orleans. They only allow for a small margin of safety, like 2 feet below the high water mark. When a surge comes in that is bigger than planned for, New Orleans will be under water again. They say it costs too much to fix the problem once and for all. With the global changes in weather patterns, I'm confident that storms and hurricanes in the future will over-shadow any we have experienced in the past.

Aw shucks! Let's sink a super tanker and position it over the leak and then suck it out of the tanker

I don't see that as out of the question.

Actually, the biggest issue might be navigating the hull into position. Pick one close to or already retired about to be scraped.

Love it.

Use a big wrench for a big nut...

I'm definitely for a similar approach Bwire. I'm serious about quick and dirty, fast and simple. Originally I wanted to drop 5,000 pound steel weights. Then I thought of steel weights, gravel, and then concrete balls.

Even these things would take time to make or simply collect.

Now as time has passed and is passing I'm for sinking ghost ships with their tops cut off, or simply whatever will be fastest.

Overall my goal is to apply pressure to the wound, and stop the bleeding.

Plagiarist ! See Post#8 at THIS THREAD...

Seriously---

while it is true that SOMETIMES, a big problem is solved by a "minimalistic" approach... THIS gusher was not and IS not in that league.

Everyone 'round the table on this one, from the get-go, has been playing tiddly-winks, while the correct approach would have AT LEAST allowed our mop-up abilities to keep-up-with any "weepage".

Thet thar BARGE shoulda been sunk long ago, with multiple "nipples" of various sizes sticking out the bottom (now pointing upwards)... some for dispersant injection, bigger ones for suction.

But [ Mr Cynic here] : that would NEVER get done cuz 1600 Pennsylvania has an

I D I O T - I N - C H A R G E !

A ship with all necessary equipment seems rather more effective than reinventing the wheel.

A ship also has integral controls of ballast and though not designed to aid a controlled sinking process may prove invaluable.

Who knows, maybe they will get it under control since today (3rd, of June) I hear they cut the pipe finally, and will attempt to cap it.

Who knows now? Possibly the plan became to threaten no hope till August, and then finally succeed, and get oil out of the well?

So much damage has already been done, this could be a case where all hope is centered on "next time, we'll do better."

Even in retrospect, while I didn't think that the containment dome, funnel thing would work, I didn't leap right away to cutting the top off a ship and sinking it over the "Wound", but only leapt to applying pressure to the wound right away.

Sometimes Bigger is Better!

My English friend said that BP has been drilling in the North Sea for 30 years and never done such a thing. The reason it happened in his judgement was that US government regulators were in bed with BP to the point they signed off on a rush job, pulling the mud out, out of order.

As a general rule everytime you do things out of order, you have problems, or disasters.

And now: What if the North Koreans get the idea that torpedoing oil rigs serves their purposes? The evidence for the postulation that they shot the rig, is short, but what if?

In the past we now know ships have cruised around in the Persian Gulf sucking polluted water up and spinning it to separation.

This may be a very useful technology to apply to the plasticated areas of the oceans. There are a multiplicity of threats to mankind these days. We can do a lot to mitigate both those of our own doing, and those of the force major.

I really do hope that tomorrow this poisoning wound in the Gulf Coast is stopped, but think that it does point out that since it happened, it could happen again, and we need to know how, and have things ready to stop in the future any sort of similar event ever going on for more than three days.

why would the president be in charge of this. I don't think you really understand how businesses in a democracy work.

Good idea. Make it a BP tanker.

Dare I submit it again? (see me being barred for over submissions!)

My suggestion is a (relatively) small metal fabrication to close pipe
and head leaks which can be "thrown overboard" to reach the leaks.
Located in place, air is pumped to clamp my device (large tongs) on
to the leak. A pipe is then attached to get the oil to the surface.

Please see sketch below

jt

BP, please, either use it, or shoot it down as useless.

Besides the cost/time of building a segmented 5000-foot tall cofferdam, water currents would possibly wreck it regularly.

As for the seemingly profit-preserving tactics BP is using so far, a quote in a link in another story on CR4 about the disaster is enlightening. Responding to the idea of blasting the leak closed, a BP consultant/engineer said that if it failed, there would be no other option left. It does make sense to conserve enough of the well structure to make continued attempts possible.

I wonder where the hell the fleet of tankers/barges and pumps and separators is that could gradually remove the oil from the water? No expense should be spared in trying to preserve that part of our environment and the lives/lifetyles of the people in the area. (I live far from the Gulf.)