Oil rig sinks after explosion off the Louisiana coast

[Opsa]

Betchya we'll be paying for it, though.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Today, NPR mentioned that the burn-off has started.

[ivor]

I just heard the spill may be five times larger than thought.

Spill here!  Spill now!

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Another rig had an accident today:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63T55Q20100430

On one end Obama finally made a moratorium on off coast drilling, on the other Mrs Palin thinks all is fine, accidents happen, you know? Keep drilling...

[Sibling DavidH]

She actually remembered the Exxon disaster!  That's amazing.  Of course she hasn't learned any lessons from it, but hey, she remembered it. 

[Ageis]

Now, now all we know is the the person who writes her speeches remembers the Exxon disaster. And witht he wonder that is Google we can't even be sure of that.

Every time she appears in the news I am just the little bit happier that the democrats won that election. That woman terrifies me.

The bit that really makes me is the company pointing out how good the safety record of this model of rig has been up till now and some times accidents happen.

Yeah it had a wonderful safety record right up until it caught fire, exploded and sank killing part of its crew and unleashing an ecological disaster which will have ramifications for years to come.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Some people don't understand that sometimes you only need one accident; the Concorde was the safest plane on record until the accident when it became the worst (excluding the Shuttle which should've been grounded indefinitely after the Challenger).

But nuance isn't precisely her forte, which BTW is the whole point, things have to be very simple so that the electorate can vote on issues.

[Swatopluk]

I heard recently that the oil industry actually predicted (publically!) that one major oil spill per year would have to be expected, if offshore oil drilling was expanded as wished. The 'major' was probably expected to be far smaller than what we have now but in general there was (and is) that no-omelette-without-breaking-some-eggs mentality. At least if it is somebody else's eggs while the omelette is yours.

[Aggie]

This is the problem with offshore; small spills may not appear at surface in a form that can be cleaned up, and large ones get out of control much too easily.  Spills always happen in the petroleum industry - my job depends on it - but at least on land, provided the site is not on the banks of a river, there's a limit to how large of an area can be impacted by a single event.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

According to SkyTruth the spill is now 26.000 barrels per day, surpassing the Exxon Valdez.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

According to SkyTruth the spill is now 26.000 barrels per day, surpassing the Exxon Valdez.

That was inevitable:  the misbegotten oil tanker had a finite limit of oil onboard.

The sub-oceanic well head does not, for all practical purposes-- and as typical in super-deep wells, it's under more pressure than even the deep ocean water, so out it comes under high pressure.

Until it's capped, obviously.

I strongly suspect they are looking for ways to cap it, and maintain a later re-entry, rather than just stopping the oil flow:  which would be simple enough, I suspect.

In fact, dropping a very high explosive near to the well, would crush the ground beneath, and the pipestem as well, effectively blocking the flow, but completely ruining the well for future use. 

Since their first priority is to get oil, and protecting  environment is a distant last, behind several other conflicting priorities, they will piddle about with something easily reversible.

Okay, so I'm cynical... 

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I don't doubt the capacity for selfserving behavior much less from an oil company, but I'm not that sure that an explosion would necessarily stop the flow, the pressure from the reservoir has to be incredibly high to pump that amount of oil at that depth, and an explosion might complicate things by creating cracks that would be impossible to seal. Besides the damage potential is incredibly high and the government already said that BP would have to pay the full bill*, without counting with the obvious class action lawsuits from the fishing and tourist industries in the gulf.

*I doubt they'll pay all, Exxon did all in it's power not to do so and to this day I seriously doubt they paid a quarter of the damage made.

[Aggie]

Was discussing this on site today; the best option we could come up with was to run a larger casing down over top of the wellhead and up to surface, which would not stop the flow but at least allow it to be mostly captured (in tankers, etc).

That'd be pretty difficult, although if you could guide it with ROVs, not impossible.

[ivor]

That's what they are talking about doing is drilling a relief well. 

[Aggie]

That will take, in all likelihood, a month or two to get online.

Even an inland well of any significant depth takes time, and they are attempting to hit the actual well pipe in the formation, three miles away.  It's like....  dunno, don't want to do the conversions, but somewhere along the line of trying to place an extra-long straw into the little hole on the top of a fast-food soda cup on the goal line, from the top row of the opposite side of a football stadium.  They have the technology to do it, but it'll still be damned lucky if it works on the first go.   

In the meantime, something is needed to control the oil that keeps coming out.  Booms don't work for a 25 x 50 km slick.