Will The BP Cap Hold? Poll

[LuckyStrike]

So do you think the cap will hold, and things will return to normal overtime? Or will it hold for a few days and then we notice it shooting out of the seafloor?

[Phoenix]

Sure, the cap will hold!

Just like sealing off a pressure cooker's safety release valve will keep it shut...and the vessel itself bursts!

Oil will be flowing from the sea floor in no time.

[1970 silver art]

So do you think the cap will hold, and things will return to normal overtime? Or will it hold for a few days and then we notice it shooting out of the seafloor?


I think that the cap will hold, however, I do not think that things will ever return to normal for the gulf coast states.

[LuckyStrike]

So do you think the cap will hold, and things will return to normal overtime? Or will it hold for a few days and then we notice it shooting out of the seafloor?


I think that the cap will hold, however, I do not think that things will ever return to normal for the gulf coast states.


Nice avatar :)

[Trinity]

The cap holds. The mind play has been a success. Americans now think oil is bad and we need newer safer energy sources pronto. Job complete.

[Ponce]

Even if it holds all that it will do is to create more pressure to those places where oil was coming out slowly from between the rocks and the oil will come out faster.

[Phoenix]

Americans now think oil is bad and we need newer safer energy sources pronto. Job complete.


Can you present any evidence that anyone has been convinced that "oil is bad"? Oil companies are bad. British Petroleum has been an evil company ever since founded as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company 101 years ago.

[Grand Master Melon]

I need a "no" or a "boobs" option.

Thanks.

[Gaillo]

Where's the "cap won't hold" option? I predict failure by Monday....

[Phoenix]

Where's the "cap won't hold" option? I predict failure by Monday....


http://gold-silver.us/forum/general-discussion/bp-no-oil-leaking-into-gulf-from-busted-well/msg80469/#msg80469

[Gaillo]

Where's the "cap won't hold" option? I predict failure by Monday....


http://gold-silver.us/forum/general-discussion/bp-no-oil-leaking-into-gulf-from-busted-well/msg80469/#msg80469


Wow... first time I've seen that post! Great minds think alike, I guess. I just picked Monday because I was thinking "no way that duct-tape job will last through the weekend"... I actually expect that it will probably fail sometime Saturday or Sunday.

[Grand Master Melon]

The cap holds. The mind play has been a success. Americans now think oil is bad and we need newer safer energy sources pronto. Job complete.


So are you saying that oil is both the ideal source of energy as well as a safe source of energy?

Surely I will get smites here but I really find it pathetic that we have yet to move beyond oil.

[Phoenix]

Surely I will get smites here but I really find it pathetic that we have yet to move beyond oil.


No smites from me!

It IS pathetic. If "we" hadn't spent trillions upon trillions on war over the last several decades, we would surely have cost-effective and available fusion energy generation, ultra-advanced solar power for vehicles, cures for most diseases, single-payer health care at half the cost of current rates...

[JDRock]

...if goldman bets bp stock will go up, itll hold....if they short it, it " accidentally " blows again.

[cortez]

sticking with WEB BOTS oil volcano

[horseshoe3]

It would hold a lot better if they would get a pipe up to the surface and start sucking all the oil out that they can get. Instead, they drill into the side of the pipe so they can plug it.

Can anyone explain to me why the sea floor would start leaking now. It didn't leak (much) before this hole was ever drilled. Plugging it would be the same as returning to the original state of nature ???

[StackerKen]

Where's the "cap won't hold" option? I predict failure by Monday....


http://gold-silver.us/forum/general-discussion/bp-no-oil-leaking-into-gulf-from-busted-well/msg80469/#msg80469


Wow... first time I've seen that post! Great minds think alike, I guess. I just picked Monday because I was thinking "no way that duct-tape job will last through the weekend"... I actually expect that it will probably fail sometime Saturday or Sunday.


I'm going the other way....I say the cap will hold...Don't know about the other "leaks"

I'll see you guys back here on Monday. To say "I told you so" :D ;)

[platinumdude]

cap will hold, but the major leak is elsewhere.

[SHTF2010]

we're assuming a " cap " is there because MSM / .gov / BP told us ?

and the capped well pictures are recent ?

[Trinity]

This story is a wrap.



NEW ORLEANS – BP's experimental cap was holding Saturday as the final hours ticked away in a two-day trial run to make sure it keeps oil from pouring into the Gulf of Mexico without blowing a new leak in the busted well.

Kent Wells, a BP PLC vice president, said engineers glued to an array of pressure, temperature, sonar and other sensors were seeing no evidence of oil escaping into the water or the sea floor. Undersea robots were also patrolling the well site for signs of trouble.

A new breach underground was a major concern going into the test, because oil breaking out of pipes in the bedrock would be harder to control and could endanger plans for a permanent plug.

"We're feeling more comfortable," Wells said on a morning conference call, but cautioned: "The test is not over."

BP and the federal point man for the disaster, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, have said they may decide to reopen the cap at least partly after the 48-hour test period ends Saturday around 3:30 p.m. EDT, although it's not clear what conditions would prompt them to do so.

That call will be made by Allen, Wells said.

BP shut valves in the cap Thursday, stopping the flow of oil into the Gulf for the first time since the April 20 explosion on the BP-leased oil rig Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and unleashed the spill 5,000 feet below the sea.

With the cap working like a giant cork to keep the oil inside the well, scientists kept watch in case the buildup of pressure underground caused new leaks in the well pipe and in the surrounding bedrock that could make the disaster even worse.

Pressure readings after 41 hours were 6,745 pounds per square inch and rising slowly, Wells said, below the 7,500 psi that would have shown the well was not leaking. He said pressure continued to rise by around 2 psi per hour, compared to a range between 2 and 10 psi BP and the government provided late Friday. A low pressure reading, or a falling one, could mean the oil is escaping.

Wells said bubbles seen on video feeds from the well were common underwater, but said they would take samples to make sure they aren't gas escaping from the well.

The cap is designed to prevent oil from spilling into the Gulf, either by keeping it bottled up in the well or by capturing it and piping it to ships on the surface. It is not yet clear which way the cap will be used if it passes the pressure test.

Either way, the cap is a temporary measure until a relief well can be completed and mud and cement can be pumped into the broken well deep underground to seal it more securely than the cap.

BP is drilling two relief wells, one of them as a backup. Wells said work on the first one was far enough along that they expect to reach the broken well's casing, or pipes, deep underground by late this month. Then the job of jamming it with mud and cement could take "a number of days through a few weeks."

Even with the cap holding, no one has declared victory — or failure. President Barack Obama on Friday cautioned the public "not to get too far ahead of ourselves," warning of the danger of new leaks "that could be even more catastrophic."

BP and government scientists at sea and in a faraway control room at BP's U.S. headquarters in Houston have been keeping a white-knuckle vigil around the clock since the cap was shut.

One mysterious development was that the pressure readings were not rising as high as expected.

Allen said late Friday that two possible reasons were being debated by scientists: The reservoir that is the source of the oil could be running lower three months into the spill. Or there could be an undiscovered leak somewhere down in the well. Allen ordered further study but remained confident.

"This is generally good news," he said. But he cautioned, "We need to be careful not to do any harm or create a situation that cannot be reversed."

Even if the cap passes the test, more uncertainties lie ahead: Where will the oil already spilled go? How long will it take to clean up the coast? What will happen to the region's fishermen? And will life on the Gulf Coast ever be the same again?

There was no end in sight to the cleanup in the water and on shore. Somewhere between 94 million and 184 million gallons have spilled into the Gulf, according to government estimates.

Large sections of the Gulf Coast have been closed to fishing and shellfish harvesting. Many fishermen have been hired out by BP to do cleanup work.

While commercial fishing is still widely shut down, Louisiana reopened more than 80 percent of its waters for recreational fishing this week. On Saturday, anglers were out enjoying their restored freedom.

"It's a blessing," said Brittany Lawson, 22, a college student from River Ridge, La., as she fished off a pier with her boyfriend's family on Grand Isle. "I just hope it's not short-lived. I hope that the cleanup's really serious and that ... The cap holds and everything."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill

[DMac]

(unofficial) Transcript from the BP briefing this morning:


http://unixwiz.net/bp/tech-2010-07-17-am.txt

Kent Wells Technical Briefing, 7:30AM CDT, 2010/07/17 Saturday

Transcribed by Steve Friedl [SJFriedl] - steve@unixwiz.net

Note: These are on-the-fly paraphrases, not direct quotes!

Darren Bodo in BP press office
only briefing today - no PM briefing
tomorrow at 7:30AM CDT
Kent "Good morning: let me start first with relief well: RW1 by DD3, completed open hole ranging run yesterday
(precision part of the hole). Now 4.8' from macondo well, angle of 1.9 degrees"
"Now gonna drill 24' to the casing. Feeling very good at this point how the well is lining up"
"Drill that, do another ranging run, set casing, looking for intersection at end of July"
"Well integrity test continues. Pressure 6745"
"Building 2psi/hr"
"Buildup is slowing down"
"Question yesterday about reservoir pressure would be, I think about 6800 psi +/- 50"
"Continuing w/ monitoring, temperature, ROVs, sonar scans, seismics"
"Doing 2 seismic runs today - an overabundance of caution"
"Taking every possible precaution. I mentioned yesterday: NOAA vessel doing surveys to see if there could be breaches other places"
"You'll see bubbles on the 36" casing"
"This is quite normal. First piece of pipe put in down to 500'. Build well on top of that"
"There are 6 or 8 valves around this piece of pipe, it's quite common. But we'll go take a sample and make sure it's not gas from deeper down in the riser"
"Could be nitrogen or biodegrading methane"
"As the well cools down, that's probably what caused those bubbles"
"With the well shut in, there's no containment data to share with you"
Now open for Q
Q from Upstream: "Could you use this cap to choke the well back to what the current collection can take?"
"We'll be progressing every 6 hours as unified comand analyzes the data. Clearly if all the data says we have integrity in the well, and we wanted to contain -vs- shut in, we would have that option"
"But no decisions have been made"
Q from CNN: "Could there be some sort of debris or blockage that's contributing to the low pressure?"
"I don't think so: in a no-flow situation, anything that would act as a choke wouldn't act as a factor"
[tone of voice is that this was a surprise question]
"Technique we're using is a Horner plot. I don't think there's anything in the way of the pressure"
Q Reuters: "Is the test going to end after 48 hours?"
Kent: "I'm not going to jump ahead of the process. Adm Allen is the decision-maker, those decisions will be made as we collect data"
Q NBC News: "This test is going to continue all day until tomorrow morning? Does this mean you're going to keep the well shut-in past mid-day today? How would you assess info you've gotten so far?"
[ugh, same question]
"Conditions have always been to allow extension of the test if there is no risk, more to learn, no reason to make a decision right now"
"So far, everythign we've seen indicates that no evidence that we don't have integrity. Pressure building as one would expect."
[he worded it carefully, "no evidence of no integrity"]
Q from Bloomberg: "Since our tech briefing, did you find additional evidence against leaks? Beyond 48 hours will you do more tests that you haven't done so far, diff kinds of tests?"
"No evidence of lack of integrity, we'll just keep monitoring as we go forward" blah blah blah
Q from NYT: "Update on timetable for getting 3rd & 4th containment system?"
A "Over next coupla weeks, addl containment will come in - taking slight pause w/ all additional monitoring"
"First is Q4000 & Helix, then we have the ability to bring in the Enterprise w/ LMRP cappy, that may collect all flow at that point"
"Second freestanding riser is just about built and in place, need to do connections, toisis pisces[sp?] in the field in a coupla days, then some days to connect all up"
"Only thing to get in the way is weather. Over next coupla weeks we have options to bring up significantly more capabilities"
Q from BBC News "How did you arrive at that 7500psi pressure number to look for? Could 6700psi be result of depletion?"
A "We've put together numerous models of what would cause this with having integrity, having some, having no integrity, lots of monitoring"
[more of the same]
"We're feeling more comfortable that we have integrity, but test is not over, not reaching conclusions. No evidence that we don't have integrity, and that pressure rises gives us confidence"
Q from AP: "When you say you're feeling more comfortable that you have integrity, does that mean you have more confidence that there won't be more oil let into the environment? Still chance of oil back into water?"
"If we do decide at any point, during or after test, that we wanna open the well back up, we will flow into the gulf for a time to bring pressure down so we can go into collection systems [q4000 & helix] and we will work at that point to bring vessels up to max collection capacity. Will move to collect all the oil"
"Could be a period of flow into the gulf"
Last Q
Q from ABC News: "Assuming pressure readings are accurages, assuming depletion, was the flow rate prior to capping lower than you thought?"
"Clarifying: we didn't predict 7500, we set a range, right now 6756 headed to 6800 +/- 50psi, very much in the range"
"Our whole focus is on running the test perfectly, monitoring everything, running 2 seismic lines 2x/day, almost continuous seismic ops. Really focused on that, but clearly math says that lower reservoir pressure means lower flow rate, but we're not focused on that"
-end-

[Gaillo]

UPDATE: Cap seems to be holding (for now...) - but leaks have been found around the well.

Official: Seep found near BP's blown out oil well (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9H1N4B05)

[the riot act]

The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Sunday because an announcement about the next steps had not been made yet.

Being as the feds have a bunch of people looking for a leak, and no one has come out in public to state that there really is a leak, (just a anno source, hell that could be anyone with a agenda) I'm calling BS!

Show me the leak!

I don't trust either BP or the gov, I'm really just tired of the doom that hasn't happened, and most likely won't happen.

Flame away!

[StackerKen]

UPDATE: Cap seems to be holding (for now...) - but leaks have been found around the well.

Official: Seep found near BP's blown out oil well (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9H1N4B05)


I found this interesting, in that story you linked to


And even though it has been only days since the oil was turned off, the naked eye could spot improvements on the water. The crude appeared to be dissipating quickly on the surface of the Gulf around the Deepwater Horizon site.

That seems kinda strange

[StackerKen]

I don't trust either BP or the gov, I'm really just tired of the doom that hasn't happened, and most likely won't happen.

Flame away!



What??

You don't believe the Giant Methane Tsunami is about to destroy FL????

You have really got your head in the sand




:sarc:

[1970 silver art]

It is hard to believe anything that BP is saying. Like somebody mentioned, BP lost their credibility a long time ago. Who really knows what to believe anymore? As for the Federal gov't, well it is, after all, the Federal government and they are hard to believe anyway and they tend to be a day late and a dollar short when it comes to responding to disasters. Man-made or otherwise.

[the riot act]

It is hard to believe anything that BP is saying. Like somebody mentioned, BP lost their credibility a long time ago. Who really knows what to believe anymore? As for the Federal gov't, well it is, after all, the Federal government and they are hard to believe anyway and they tend to be a day late and a dollar short when it comes to responding to disasters. Man-made or otherwise.


BP is no more trustful than the gov, Matt Simmons, and the BP cheerleaders. While the upper management of both BP and gov may have different intentions, the guys out there busting their asses to get a handle on this I trust a hell of a lot more than the suits.

I posted this (http://gold-silver.us/forum/gulf-oil-disaster/breaking-seepage-detected-near-blown-out-bp-well/) last night. Haven't revisited the subject yet.

Like I said, don't cloud the issue at hand, (getting this thing stopped and cleaned up) with all the scare mongering and denial. Just give the tools to the people who can fix it period! Then we can start the finger pointing. No doubt what we all suspect will rise to the top.

[Trinity]

I found this interesting, in that story you linked to


And even though it has been only days since the oil was turned off, the naked eye could spot improvements on the water. The crude appeared to be dissipating quickly on the surface of the Gulf around the Deepwater Horizon site.

That seems kinda strange.
Yes it reads like " Ok everybody scram, nothing to see here. Move along."