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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: not_prudent who wrote (130811)	4/29/2010 3:41:25 PM
From: JimisJim	9 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 206187

<what could be so difficult about getting at a damaged pipe> Well, let's see... you're flying an ROV from the surface by remote control around complex stack of valves, etc., trying to stab an arm with just the right interface into that interface a mile below the surface of the ocean... the riser, where the oil is coming out doesn't have any valves built into the casing string -- casing is a larger tubular string from the surface to the seafloor inside which the drilling string, etc. operates and up through which the mud circulates... at this point there's no way to "plug" the riser to stop the oil... you have to close the valves on the seafloor... Do you know how much pressure we're talking about inside the wellhead not to mention just the water pressure? And then there's the temperature issues a mile below the surface... lack of light... perhaps several currents at different depths... etc. And then there's the BP "luck" -- for a couple days, the waves hindered efforts and there's this: "BP planned to use ROVs to close the blow out preventer (BOP) valves on the well head 5000 feet below the surface of the water. The valve closing procedure was estimated to take 24 to 36 hours as of April 25. As of April 28, BP has been unable to do this. BP Engineers are working on two other options to secure the source. The first and fastest is to place a dome over the well head capturing the oil and piping it to the surface to a storage vessel. This operation will still take weeks before it can be put in place. Another option is to introduce an additional drilling rig and drill to intersect the original borehole to relieve it. This operation will take 2 to 3 months however to stop the flow of oil. Re-drilling the well straight down was done in Australia after the Montara oil spill. In this case, once the second drilling operation reached the original borehole the operators pumped drilling mud into the well to stop the flow of oil. Jim