Second ship will start pulling up oil from Gulf spill Monday
nola.com
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The second containment system will boost the amount of oil being captured to as much as 28,000 barrels of oil per day, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Wednesday,...
Using the same tubes and pipes put in place to try the failed "top kill" method of stopping the oil by pumping mud into the blown-out Maconda well, engineers will instead suck oil out of the well and to a ship, called the Q4000, on the water's surface. The Q4000 was also used in the top kill process.
Since that method failed, the Q4000 has been retrofitted with a flaring system that is capable of burning oil. Allen said the goal is to keep oil out of the water by either collecting and processing it or burning it. To date, oil has not been burned as part of the containment process.
The 28,000 barrels-per-day figure is derived by combining the up to 10,000 barrel-per-day capacity expected of the Q4000 containment system with the 18,000 barrel-per-day capacity of the Discoverer Enterprise, the vessel now collecting oil via the Lower Marine Riser Package containment system, or containment cap, put in place June 3...
Meanwhile, two other vessels that will be part of BP's long-term plan for oil containment are en route to the accident site. The Loch Rannoch, a shuttle tanker traveling from the North Sea, will arrive between June 12 and June 15, Allen said. The Toisa Pisces, a production ship, will be on the scene about June 19.
Those vessels will replace The Massachusetts and the Discoverer Enterprise, respectively, when the long-term containment plan is launched. Under that plan, engineers will replace the current cap on the blowout preventer with a heavier, better-sealing cap. That tool is now under construction. It will feed oil from the well to a floating pipe, suspended 300 feet below the surface. That pipe will attach via flexible hose to the Toisa Pisces on the surface that can be disconnected in case a storm requires the Gulf to be cleared of vessels and the response effort temporarily halted... |
