striped_bear
19th May 2010, 09:37 PM
Rense is down right now (for me) so here's a cached link:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://rense.com/general90/analy.htm&hl=en&strip=1
Great Analysis Of Exactly What Is Going On
The BP Deep water horizon, Macondo Well Blowout.
and what we are facing in the Gulf.
By SHR
5-15-10
I want to try and put in simple terms what we are facing as far as what is coming in this potentially catastrophic well blow out event. It's going to be a long post, but an important one, it is of critical importance if you are not fully aware as you can be of what is going on, what the action plan is and what is taking place, because this event may very well affect us all...as in GLOBAL. There is a lot of partial truths..a lot of falsehoods, a lot is not being said and a lot of lies are out there, I think we all see this...we all want some answers...we all want to have a grasp of what is happening. First of all, don't feel bad if you don't understand what is going on or feel sort of lost, this is an extremely complicated event. I hope I can inform people and give them some basic factual knowledge and I never ever mean to "Talk down" to anyone...I only want to inform and hope everyone that wishes to learn does learn...I also hope the "pros" fact check me and assure all that I do say is true and factual and if is not...then speak up......and also add in regardless.
With that being said I will try and instill the sense of urgency and seriousness that I personally feel about this....this is a bad one people...we are close...real close and all this is a very real, present and IMMINENT Danger. Trust me when I tell you that people who know are scared of this, it is THAT bad. People who deal with things that would scare most people half to death they deal with as a matter of course every single day...men who operate enormous machinery that most of us will never see or ever be around....I run and own some pretty big stuff...bigger and more powerful than cars or trucks, but the scale of some these oil and gas industry machines?...they dwarf these things...things so huge that most buildings cannot house them.....literally gargantuan equipment and all that is associated with it, huge forces and the people who operate these monsters?...they are worried, very worried....and they rarely worry, if ever....and I am worried...which is also not the norm.
This is an edge of the abyss situation that we are facing in my opinion. Forget what you see now...this oil slick is minuscule in order of magnitude of what could happen..what is near to happening and what ABSOLUTELY WILL HAPPEN if it cannot be stopped. I cannot impress this enough...NEAR...because it truly is near. You probably sense it...know that this could go big...well it can...and although you might not understand exactly what is going on you can understand that we are not being told everything and it is difficult to form a clear picture. I hope to make some things clear and give people enough of an information handle to "get it".
First, "What happened":
Simply put, this well had a "blow out" what that means is that explosive high pressure gas rose through the well pipe up from miles under the sea and the pressure blew off all the well control gear, valves etc etc. In this case...it also ignited and exploded, destroying the deep water horizon drill rig and killed 11 men. The reasons for this are certainly complex and will be argued on a technical level, forensic examination and investigation will be done to the most minute detail and certainly some reasons will be found and likely some questions will still remain. Changes industry wide will be implemented etc etc but all anyone needs to know right now is that this well system failed in some way to handle the immense pressure of the gas that infiltrated the well system...and all, or enough, of the complex safety systems failed. There will be time for blame later, there is an urgent matter at hand and what I want to focus on is what is left, what is happening and what is being done about it...
What is left of the well system and what is down there:
The well system doesn't really begin at the bottom or the top of the system itself. Where it really begins is at the well head which is the interface of the earth and the hole in the ground. The drill system goes up...the well bore system goes down...I call them systems because they are complex animals...the actual complexity is something not to be concerned with right now...but it is at that interface where the battle of man vs earth really begins.
Fighter earth is pretty simple..oil or gas..which man wants...mostly under massive pressures and in this case, very much so..held far away in a cavity tucked away which earth can easily hold under these enormous pressures...fighter man above?...not so simple....because we must use complex machines, valves and pumps etc etc to create our own pressure to combat earth and drive through and pierce that cavity and take the oil and gas. We create incredible pressures with dense fluids (mud) to equalize what earth does naturally...when they become out of balance?...we lose the fight...earth beats us and up shoots the "product" and we go boom or splash. To combat this if it does happen, we use what is called a "blow Out Preventer" or BOP for short....this is one of the few pieces left down there now and it attach's to well head...it's our first line of defense..and this is the "safety system" that you hear failed in this instance...
A subsea BOP is not a minor piece of equipment that might be merely the size of your refrigerator or a truck...in fact the one down there now is 60 feet tall and weighs 450 tons...that's 6 stories tall easy and it is a Massive piece of equipment....to give you all an idea?...I have some pictures of one that is probably an exact copy of the one on this well. Same company made it..and it's on a very similar site with almost identical specs...so this will be almost exactly it...right down to the "Yellow pod" which is it's control/brain...it's a huge piece of complex gear..here is what one looks like...
LMRP seperated to transport:
All together on a flat bed:
The bop is like a big hollow assembly "Stack" with hydraulics attached to it that fire big sharp piece of steel called shear rams across the hollow that can snip the drill pipe clean off and seal the hollow shaft, like a dog nail clipper, but it stays closed.
The drill goes through the BOP assembly which really consists of two pieces...the bop and LMRP..."Lower Marine Riser Package" the LMRP sits on top of the bop which is what the "Riser" attach's too and they are both hollow stack ups with rams that fire to seal the well off.
The "Riser" is a very large and thick steel hollow tube that "rises" to the surface and attach's to drilling equipment. The drill goes through the Riser...then the Lmrp..and then the bop...enters the earth and drills down. The drill is also hollow because it makes it lighter...so when you hear "Drill pipe"...it is because the long drill "shaft" is really a hollow pipe with a drillbit on the end. You have probably heard these terms used a lot lately, so now you know basically what they are.
All 3 pieces do remain on the sea floor, although not fully intact or workable as to what they were made for...and all 3 come into play as to what is now happening...and what will happen.
I will base the following on the facts as presented to me as I know them to be real and true. If anyone wants to play....it's all gone man!!!...IT'S A GIANT HOLE IN EARTH AND A VOLCANO MAN!!! or...it's all fake like the mooon landings!...all a show! or ZOMFG there is a million PSI down there and it's tapped in a quadrillion cubic feet of gas!!!...then I suggest you all use your own bullsh*t detectors and decide for yourselves what is real or not...and if any of the latter was true?...well...then there is no need to bother with reading this anyway...
What happened when the well blew out was that the bop failed to close...it should have snipped off the drill pipe and we wouldn't be here...but it didn't....I believe it tried to...but it didn't have the power to or something went wrong...I believe it is partially closed and perhaps squished the drill pipe some and is helping to restrict the flow...no one outside of BP really knows and maybe they even don't...but it failed for whatever reason...So the well blows up gas and oil...then explodes on the rig...2 days later the rig sinks...the well is blowing gas and oil up the whole time. When the rig sinks, the riser pipe is still attached to both the BOP and the rig, the drill pipe is still inside the riser pipe..a pipe inside a pipe.....it gets all bent up and twisted as the entire rig falls to the sea floor...sometime along the way down the riser and drill pipe inside it break off from the wreckage somewhere along that 5000 foot long pipe. It snaps apart and oil and gas start gushing out the end opposite the BOP. The portions closer to the well BOP are bent up from the crash and the end attached to the bop assembly?...stays attached, but it is bent over...the rig wreckage comes to rest on sea floor about 1500 feet away from the well, no longer connected to it....the pipes still attached to the well are gushing out oil even though it's mostly "kinked" up like a bent up garden hose and damaged....
And now...begins the fight against the open leaking well...
So of course this is a disaster...but BP owns a leaking well so they must act on that. They deploy ROVs to see what is going on...but I'm sure they already know...they have an out of control well at 5000 feet deep in the Gulf that is gushing oil...it's only a matter of "How bad"...at first it might not have been "real bad"...but it is now...and I will tell you why later...so BP tries to close the bop again with ROVs hitting failsafe dead kill valves...they fail...they cannot close the bop rams....maybe the drill pipe is bent to hell in there...maybe it's just too weak or damaged now, maybe it's a bad build...but it won't close..and it would appear they have given up trying...The whole time...oil and gas is rushing through as much as all the restrictions allow, those restrictions being the kinks in the hose...the maybe squished up pipe inside the bop and the partially closed snip system...but it is gushing oil and gas through under the high pressures of the well....leaking out causing the "oil slick spill".....but this is far from the only problem...
Oil as it comes up from the earth is not exactly "clean"....in fact..it has a fair amount of crud in it....sand, hydrocarbons, other solids...and these impurities, they are abrasive...just like sand paper...or more like a "Sand blaster" in this case...so this abrasive mix of oil, crud and gas is rushing through the steel tubing and the machinery of the BOP under enormous virtually inexhaustible pressure...and it's chewing away the steel pipes and parts that are holding it back from rushing more...wherever there is a kink or something in the way?...there is the force of the abrasive fluid slowly eating it, wearing it away, same for whatever leak that has high pressure fluid blasting through it...which may not be the ones you see, but ones inside what is left of the pipes that the fluid is really shooting out of or past.
So the "Leaks" get bigger because they are being eroded away, when that happens?...more fluid gushes past and they get eaten more, the faster it can leak, the more it will eat, the more it chews away, the faster it goes like a dam made of ice slowly but surely melting....and it will eventually go faster and faster until all the parts are worn thin enough that they will fail and explode off and the gusher will be more and more open...until it's wide open...no restrictions...THAT is inevitable, it WILL happen if this well cannot be stopped from flowing, it is only a matter of time and how much time is only a guess...but one thing that is certain...it will continue to gush more and more until it does eat everything away and is wide open.
Right now there are guesses as to how much flow is actually gushing out, but suffice to say...it's a lot...there are figures from 5,000 Barrels Per Day to 100,000 BPD....some are from video analysis of the "Plume video", some are from surface area calculations of the "Seen oil" slick..but even BP says they are all just guesses and even they are not sure...but take for example a low range number...like 10,000 BPD...next week it will be 15,000 BPD...+5k....next 25,000BPD....+10....next 40,000BPD...+15...and will increase in a geometric progression until it is wide open...estimates of that wide open flow rate are also guesses but IMO it could easily be 100,000 BPD if it blows out completely....and IT WILL BLOW OUT COMPLETELY if it cannot be halted or if for some reason nature slows or stops, which is highly highly unlikely. Even if there is 25% gas it is still 75k BPD of oil...over 3 million gallons per day...a couple of Exxon Valdez spills PER WEEK...and I used conservative numbers as you see...so it could easily do much worse...in fact my estimate could be the "Best case"...as bad as it is. The "Gas" escaping presents a whole other set of problems which depending on how much gas could escape might even be worse....but for another thread...Right now it is overall flow and mixed "Product" gushing out...and nothing in this flow is good for anything.
So there are really only 3 major pieces left...the BOP assembly bolted to the well head, the Riser pipe which is a 21" diameter steel tube with 1 1/2" thick walls and the drill pipe laying inside it...both pipes broken off laying on the sea floor gushing out fluid. There were 3 "leaks"....now they say 2, because one was the drill pipe end which is broke off farther away from the well head and is sticking out of the riser pipe, they capped that off, so it probably did not have a lot pressure in that leak, in fact BP said it did not decrease the flow...which makes sense if it is just broken off and laying inside the larger riser pipe, just held in by being bent up.
The 2nd leak we see in the "Plume video"...it is obvious the main flow is coming out the large riser pipe still attached to the BOP, but the "Other leak"...we are not getting any video of...and THAT one?...it is very likely that there is a lot more pressure there, it may be smaller and thus flowing less overall, but chances are it's blasting out a lot faster. This leak is where the pipe is bent over at the top of the BOP assembly and we have heard little about it, really just graphics with an illustration of something shooting out, but it is THAT leak, which MUST BE GROWING and is near the first bad kink over, that is probably where the Pipe which is being eroded will fail and be blown off the blow out protector...and THAT is inevitable...it WILL happen and is only a matter of time before it DOES HAPPEN.
Behind every restriction the pressure is greater than in front of it. Just like your garden hose swells up behind a kink...this is no different...so when that restriction blows away...the flow will increase greatly.
That is what they are up against...a broken bop tower attached to the well head...a leaky bent pipe coming out of that...and a "corrosive" (abrasive) fluid under high pressure shooting out the leaks and eating it all away at the same time. The clock is truly ticking and the erosion of the components will not and cannot be stopped as long as it's flowing.
What are they doing to fight it:
We have seen the cofferdams, outhouse, top hat both fail. Not surprising really, what happened was the large dome clogged with ice/hydrates...when the gas from the well shoots out it is very cold...the whole area is also under massive pressures because it is 5,000 feet below sea level which is about 2,200 pounds per square inch of pressure..everywhere....those are conditions under which these "hydrates" can form...and they are forming, it is probably like a hydrate snow storm down there. Methane Hydrates are merely Crystal structures of methane gas trapped inside water ice. So the first "outhouse" got clogged with these ice structures they believe now because it too big, had too much seawater in it, so more chance to create ice...failed...left to the side on the sea floor...the next "Top Hat"...smaller size so less water to make ice...they also had hot water and anti-freeze pumping systems on both to stop ice formation...yesterday we learned that the "Top Hat" was "set back"...no explanation...also seems to be set aside like it just wouldn't work....today we learn that they intend to stick a smaller tube up inside the leaky pipe.
All 3 of these methods were never intended to, or ever could "Stop the Leaks". All they can do is suck up some of what has already leaked out using their 3 different methods. This is not a bad thing because it will gobble up as much oil as they can and that will be that much less that leaks out into the Gulf....how much less?...until they get one to actually function?...no one knows, but all 3 of these things are a sideline to the main problem and main mission, and THAT mission is to stop the leaks.
Here is a giant sized picture of what it ought to look like down there, it also shows the new "Tube insertion" sucker outer deal...woopeee!
[link to www.flickr.com]
BP knows they have they have a ticking time bomb, and how many ticks we get?...is only a guess, but they are well aware that is a finite number...and it's counting down unrelentingly 24/7...if you noticed...BP had the Bop's brain removed...there is a reason for this...and believe me when I tell you this is their number one priority mission and all these sucker domes are more to make regular people feel good about less oil leakage, Yay! save Flipper and tippy the turtle!.... but they are not the Alpha priority for the engineers whom are well aware that a far greater and inevitable danger looms.....maybe why these measures seem half assed to us...likely because they are..and ultimately even if they did work?...they wouldn't have anything left to work on for long because the riser pipe is going to be blown off the blow out protector and there Won't be any oil shooting out the pipe laying on the sea bed...because it will no longer be attached to the well...BP has plenty of manpower and money so they can throw some at those things and it will make people glad to see that they are doing something...but that's all it is...the real mission is a technological challenge and is taking some time to setup...so if we all saw nothing happening?...people would be berserk by now...so you get some candy while you wait for the real thing...
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http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://rense.com/general90/analy.htm&hl=en&strip=1
Great Analysis Of Exactly What Is Going On
The BP Deep water horizon, Macondo Well Blowout.
and what we are facing in the Gulf.
By SHR
5-15-10
I want to try and put in simple terms what we are facing as far as what is coming in this potentially catastrophic well blow out event. It's going to be a long post, but an important one, it is of critical importance if you are not fully aware as you can be of what is going on, what the action plan is and what is taking place, because this event may very well affect us all...as in GLOBAL. There is a lot of partial truths..a lot of falsehoods, a lot is not being said and a lot of lies are out there, I think we all see this...we all want some answers...we all want to have a grasp of what is happening. First of all, don't feel bad if you don't understand what is going on or feel sort of lost, this is an extremely complicated event. I hope I can inform people and give them some basic factual knowledge and I never ever mean to "Talk down" to anyone...I only want to inform and hope everyone that wishes to learn does learn...I also hope the "pros" fact check me and assure all that I do say is true and factual and if is not...then speak up......and also add in regardless.
With that being said I will try and instill the sense of urgency and seriousness that I personally feel about this....this is a bad one people...we are close...real close and all this is a very real, present and IMMINENT Danger. Trust me when I tell you that people who know are scared of this, it is THAT bad. People who deal with things that would scare most people half to death they deal with as a matter of course every single day...men who operate enormous machinery that most of us will never see or ever be around....I run and own some pretty big stuff...bigger and more powerful than cars or trucks, but the scale of some these oil and gas industry machines?...they dwarf these things...things so huge that most buildings cannot house them.....literally gargantuan equipment and all that is associated with it, huge forces and the people who operate these monsters?...they are worried, very worried....and they rarely worry, if ever....and I am worried...which is also not the norm.
This is an edge of the abyss situation that we are facing in my opinion. Forget what you see now...this oil slick is minuscule in order of magnitude of what could happen..what is near to happening and what ABSOLUTELY WILL HAPPEN if it cannot be stopped. I cannot impress this enough...NEAR...because it truly is near. You probably sense it...know that this could go big...well it can...and although you might not understand exactly what is going on you can understand that we are not being told everything and it is difficult to form a clear picture. I hope to make some things clear and give people enough of an information handle to "get it".
First, "What happened":
Simply put, this well had a "blow out" what that means is that explosive high pressure gas rose through the well pipe up from miles under the sea and the pressure blew off all the well control gear, valves etc etc. In this case...it also ignited and exploded, destroying the deep water horizon drill rig and killed 11 men. The reasons for this are certainly complex and will be argued on a technical level, forensic examination and investigation will be done to the most minute detail and certainly some reasons will be found and likely some questions will still remain. Changes industry wide will be implemented etc etc but all anyone needs to know right now is that this well system failed in some way to handle the immense pressure of the gas that infiltrated the well system...and all, or enough, of the complex safety systems failed. There will be time for blame later, there is an urgent matter at hand and what I want to focus on is what is left, what is happening and what is being done about it...
What is left of the well system and what is down there:
The well system doesn't really begin at the bottom or the top of the system itself. Where it really begins is at the well head which is the interface of the earth and the hole in the ground. The drill system goes up...the well bore system goes down...I call them systems because they are complex animals...the actual complexity is something not to be concerned with right now...but it is at that interface where the battle of man vs earth really begins.
Fighter earth is pretty simple..oil or gas..which man wants...mostly under massive pressures and in this case, very much so..held far away in a cavity tucked away which earth can easily hold under these enormous pressures...fighter man above?...not so simple....because we must use complex machines, valves and pumps etc etc to create our own pressure to combat earth and drive through and pierce that cavity and take the oil and gas. We create incredible pressures with dense fluids (mud) to equalize what earth does naturally...when they become out of balance?...we lose the fight...earth beats us and up shoots the "product" and we go boom or splash. To combat this if it does happen, we use what is called a "blow Out Preventer" or BOP for short....this is one of the few pieces left down there now and it attach's to well head...it's our first line of defense..and this is the "safety system" that you hear failed in this instance...
A subsea BOP is not a minor piece of equipment that might be merely the size of your refrigerator or a truck...in fact the one down there now is 60 feet tall and weighs 450 tons...that's 6 stories tall easy and it is a Massive piece of equipment....to give you all an idea?...I have some pictures of one that is probably an exact copy of the one on this well. Same company made it..and it's on a very similar site with almost identical specs...so this will be almost exactly it...right down to the "Yellow pod" which is it's control/brain...it's a huge piece of complex gear..here is what one looks like...
LMRP seperated to transport:
All together on a flat bed:
The bop is like a big hollow assembly "Stack" with hydraulics attached to it that fire big sharp piece of steel called shear rams across the hollow that can snip the drill pipe clean off and seal the hollow shaft, like a dog nail clipper, but it stays closed.
The drill goes through the BOP assembly which really consists of two pieces...the bop and LMRP..."Lower Marine Riser Package" the LMRP sits on top of the bop which is what the "Riser" attach's too and they are both hollow stack ups with rams that fire to seal the well off.
The "Riser" is a very large and thick steel hollow tube that "rises" to the surface and attach's to drilling equipment. The drill goes through the Riser...then the Lmrp..and then the bop...enters the earth and drills down. The drill is also hollow because it makes it lighter...so when you hear "Drill pipe"...it is because the long drill "shaft" is really a hollow pipe with a drillbit on the end. You have probably heard these terms used a lot lately, so now you know basically what they are.
All 3 pieces do remain on the sea floor, although not fully intact or workable as to what they were made for...and all 3 come into play as to what is now happening...and what will happen.
I will base the following on the facts as presented to me as I know them to be real and true. If anyone wants to play....it's all gone man!!!...IT'S A GIANT HOLE IN EARTH AND A VOLCANO MAN!!! or...it's all fake like the mooon landings!...all a show! or ZOMFG there is a million PSI down there and it's tapped in a quadrillion cubic feet of gas!!!...then I suggest you all use your own bullsh*t detectors and decide for yourselves what is real or not...and if any of the latter was true?...well...then there is no need to bother with reading this anyway...
What happened when the well blew out was that the bop failed to close...it should have snipped off the drill pipe and we wouldn't be here...but it didn't....I believe it tried to...but it didn't have the power to or something went wrong...I believe it is partially closed and perhaps squished the drill pipe some and is helping to restrict the flow...no one outside of BP really knows and maybe they even don't...but it failed for whatever reason...So the well blows up gas and oil...then explodes on the rig...2 days later the rig sinks...the well is blowing gas and oil up the whole time. When the rig sinks, the riser pipe is still attached to both the BOP and the rig, the drill pipe is still inside the riser pipe..a pipe inside a pipe.....it gets all bent up and twisted as the entire rig falls to the sea floor...sometime along the way down the riser and drill pipe inside it break off from the wreckage somewhere along that 5000 foot long pipe. It snaps apart and oil and gas start gushing out the end opposite the BOP. The portions closer to the well BOP are bent up from the crash and the end attached to the bop assembly?...stays attached, but it is bent over...the rig wreckage comes to rest on sea floor about 1500 feet away from the well, no longer connected to it....the pipes still attached to the well are gushing out oil even though it's mostly "kinked" up like a bent up garden hose and damaged....
And now...begins the fight against the open leaking well...
So of course this is a disaster...but BP owns a leaking well so they must act on that. They deploy ROVs to see what is going on...but I'm sure they already know...they have an out of control well at 5000 feet deep in the Gulf that is gushing oil...it's only a matter of "How bad"...at first it might not have been "real bad"...but it is now...and I will tell you why later...so BP tries to close the bop again with ROVs hitting failsafe dead kill valves...they fail...they cannot close the bop rams....maybe the drill pipe is bent to hell in there...maybe it's just too weak or damaged now, maybe it's a bad build...but it won't close..and it would appear they have given up trying...The whole time...oil and gas is rushing through as much as all the restrictions allow, those restrictions being the kinks in the hose...the maybe squished up pipe inside the bop and the partially closed snip system...but it is gushing oil and gas through under the high pressures of the well....leaking out causing the "oil slick spill".....but this is far from the only problem...
Oil as it comes up from the earth is not exactly "clean"....in fact..it has a fair amount of crud in it....sand, hydrocarbons, other solids...and these impurities, they are abrasive...just like sand paper...or more like a "Sand blaster" in this case...so this abrasive mix of oil, crud and gas is rushing through the steel tubing and the machinery of the BOP under enormous virtually inexhaustible pressure...and it's chewing away the steel pipes and parts that are holding it back from rushing more...wherever there is a kink or something in the way?...there is the force of the abrasive fluid slowly eating it, wearing it away, same for whatever leak that has high pressure fluid blasting through it...which may not be the ones you see, but ones inside what is left of the pipes that the fluid is really shooting out of or past.
So the "Leaks" get bigger because they are being eroded away, when that happens?...more fluid gushes past and they get eaten more, the faster it can leak, the more it will eat, the more it chews away, the faster it goes like a dam made of ice slowly but surely melting....and it will eventually go faster and faster until all the parts are worn thin enough that they will fail and explode off and the gusher will be more and more open...until it's wide open...no restrictions...THAT is inevitable, it WILL happen if this well cannot be stopped from flowing, it is only a matter of time and how much time is only a guess...but one thing that is certain...it will continue to gush more and more until it does eat everything away and is wide open.
Right now there are guesses as to how much flow is actually gushing out, but suffice to say...it's a lot...there are figures from 5,000 Barrels Per Day to 100,000 BPD....some are from video analysis of the "Plume video", some are from surface area calculations of the "Seen oil" slick..but even BP says they are all just guesses and even they are not sure...but take for example a low range number...like 10,000 BPD...next week it will be 15,000 BPD...+5k....next 25,000BPD....+10....next 40,000BPD...+15...and will increase in a geometric progression until it is wide open...estimates of that wide open flow rate are also guesses but IMO it could easily be 100,000 BPD if it blows out completely....and IT WILL BLOW OUT COMPLETELY if it cannot be halted or if for some reason nature slows or stops, which is highly highly unlikely. Even if there is 25% gas it is still 75k BPD of oil...over 3 million gallons per day...a couple of Exxon Valdez spills PER WEEK...and I used conservative numbers as you see...so it could easily do much worse...in fact my estimate could be the "Best case"...as bad as it is. The "Gas" escaping presents a whole other set of problems which depending on how much gas could escape might even be worse....but for another thread...Right now it is overall flow and mixed "Product" gushing out...and nothing in this flow is good for anything.
So there are really only 3 major pieces left...the BOP assembly bolted to the well head, the Riser pipe which is a 21" diameter steel tube with 1 1/2" thick walls and the drill pipe laying inside it...both pipes broken off laying on the sea floor gushing out fluid. There were 3 "leaks"....now they say 2, because one was the drill pipe end which is broke off farther away from the well head and is sticking out of the riser pipe, they capped that off, so it probably did not have a lot pressure in that leak, in fact BP said it did not decrease the flow...which makes sense if it is just broken off and laying inside the larger riser pipe, just held in by being bent up.
The 2nd leak we see in the "Plume video"...it is obvious the main flow is coming out the large riser pipe still attached to the BOP, but the "Other leak"...we are not getting any video of...and THAT one?...it is very likely that there is a lot more pressure there, it may be smaller and thus flowing less overall, but chances are it's blasting out a lot faster. This leak is where the pipe is bent over at the top of the BOP assembly and we have heard little about it, really just graphics with an illustration of something shooting out, but it is THAT leak, which MUST BE GROWING and is near the first bad kink over, that is probably where the Pipe which is being eroded will fail and be blown off the blow out protector...and THAT is inevitable...it WILL happen and is only a matter of time before it DOES HAPPEN.
Behind every restriction the pressure is greater than in front of it. Just like your garden hose swells up behind a kink...this is no different...so when that restriction blows away...the flow will increase greatly.
That is what they are up against...a broken bop tower attached to the well head...a leaky bent pipe coming out of that...and a "corrosive" (abrasive) fluid under high pressure shooting out the leaks and eating it all away at the same time. The clock is truly ticking and the erosion of the components will not and cannot be stopped as long as it's flowing.
What are they doing to fight it:
We have seen the cofferdams, outhouse, top hat both fail. Not surprising really, what happened was the large dome clogged with ice/hydrates...when the gas from the well shoots out it is very cold...the whole area is also under massive pressures because it is 5,000 feet below sea level which is about 2,200 pounds per square inch of pressure..everywhere....those are conditions under which these "hydrates" can form...and they are forming, it is probably like a hydrate snow storm down there. Methane Hydrates are merely Crystal structures of methane gas trapped inside water ice. So the first "outhouse" got clogged with these ice structures they believe now because it too big, had too much seawater in it, so more chance to create ice...failed...left to the side on the sea floor...the next "Top Hat"...smaller size so less water to make ice...they also had hot water and anti-freeze pumping systems on both to stop ice formation...yesterday we learned that the "Top Hat" was "set back"...no explanation...also seems to be set aside like it just wouldn't work....today we learn that they intend to stick a smaller tube up inside the leaky pipe.
All 3 of these methods were never intended to, or ever could "Stop the Leaks". All they can do is suck up some of what has already leaked out using their 3 different methods. This is not a bad thing because it will gobble up as much oil as they can and that will be that much less that leaks out into the Gulf....how much less?...until they get one to actually function?...no one knows, but all 3 of these things are a sideline to the main problem and main mission, and THAT mission is to stop the leaks.
Here is a giant sized picture of what it ought to look like down there, it also shows the new "Tube insertion" sucker outer deal...woopeee!
[link to www.flickr.com]
BP knows they have they have a ticking time bomb, and how many ticks we get?...is only a guess, but they are well aware that is a finite number...and it's counting down unrelentingly 24/7...if you noticed...BP had the Bop's brain removed...there is a reason for this...and believe me when I tell you this is their number one priority mission and all these sucker domes are more to make regular people feel good about less oil leakage, Yay! save Flipper and tippy the turtle!.... but they are not the Alpha priority for the engineers whom are well aware that a far greater and inevitable danger looms.....maybe why these measures seem half assed to us...likely because they are..and ultimately even if they did work?...they wouldn't have anything left to work on for long because the riser pipe is going to be blown off the blow out protector and there Won't be any oil shooting out the pipe laying on the sea bed...because it will no longer be attached to the well...BP has plenty of manpower and money so they can throw some at those things and it will make people glad to see that they are doing something...but that's all it is...the real mission is a technological challenge and is taking some time to setup...so if we all saw nothing happening?...people would be berserk by now...so you get some candy while you wait for the real thing...
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