What’s the big deal?
Plug the hole.
This plug will have to be put in the well, which means the blowout preventer will have to come off. Hard, but I know it can be done.
The plug will have a rigid steel core with a tapered nose for ease of insertion.
The blue annular rings, shown in cutaway, will consist of soft internally tapered rings, and red hard externally tapered rings. The collar on top will be threaded down as far as possible, and the screws shown will bear on the rings causing them to deform and conform to the inner surface of the pipe. Then attach the pipe to a new BOP, and turn it off.
Everything is easy with the mouth, right?
13 comments Og | Uncategorized
Or, as a easier exercise, just remove the flange fitting just below the current cut and place an open valve over the now easy to connect to flange. Tighten all the bolts and then close the valve. Hook up a decent pipe and pump the oil away. Alternatively, pump epoxy or cement into the pipe before closing the valve.
Easy as pie, except for the fact that it is all under 5K feet of water and there are no ROV’s capable of doing it…Or likely able to accomplish your (most excellent) suggestion either.
[…] What’s the big deal? […]
They make rov impacts. This could also be done with hydraulics.
As much as I see this as a non issue, I think there is more going on here than that. The daily oil barrel (or something like that) had a speculation on why they are not sealing the well. Simply put the casing – pipes and surrounding concrete – is cracked. If they seal the well all that will happen is the oil will seep either into the mud or the pourous rock around there. This would not help anything. So simply put they need to try to use the pipe as is, and let it leak or else the pipe will just fully blow and leak into the ground anyway.
I’ve been watching the ROV footage, and there has been no obvious sign that the casing is cracked; however, even assuming it is, pulling the auger out of the hole and yanking the BOP off the casing, the kind of device I’m proposing could be dropped down the casing a long way below any tears or splits.
But, as I say, with the mouth, anything is easy.
“….. experts claim that the pressure of the oil discharge varies from 20-thousand to 70-thousand pounds per square inch (psi). To put that into perspective the normal pressure at a well head is about 15-hundred psi, so even at the lowest of 20-thousand psi, that’s more than 13 times greater than the average. That means the pressure is so high that the oil and abrasive particles spewing forth is acting as a sand blaster.
This sand-blast affect has thinned the pipe at the well from its original thickness of two inches to an inch or less. As the oil continues to flow at this high pressure rate eventually all the pipes and fittings will disintegrate, the well head will be blown off the drilled hole, and the hole where the well is will be bored larger and larger, and therefore, the oil will discharge unobstructed.
Tidal Wave Could Destroy Coastal Cities
At this point these marine scientists expect billions of barrels of oil to emit from the hole, draw water into the hole with temperatures 400 degrees and higher, a subsequent collapse of the gulf floor, and then a boiling and volcanic affect that will propel the bottom of the gulf upward with a force so great that a giant swell will be created.
“The tsunami wave this will create will be anywhere from 20 to 80 feet high, possibly more. Then the floor will fall into the now vacant chamber. This is how nature will seal the hole,†Dr. James P. Wickstrom wrote in a recent on-line article.
“Depending on the height of the tsunami, the ocean debris, oil, and existing structures that will be washed away on shore and inland, will leave the area from 50 to 200 miles inland devoid of life. Even if the debris is cleaned up, the contaminants that will be in the ground and water supply will prohibit re-population of these areas for an unknown number of years,†Wickstrom wrote in his piece.
Sounds like fun.
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Apparently nobody has seen the video of the ROV’s.
the pressure at the wellhead is high because of the weight of the water pressing on the sea floor and the depth at which the oil lies. The seawater around it is at a pretty high pressure too. The differential pressure is not what people imagine it to be, because if it was, it would shoot up out of that wellhead in a perfectly cylindrical column, dragging a stream of water past it in an amazing demonstration of the venturi effect. Instead it billows out of the pipe, comparatively lazily. Everyone seems to have forgotten the laws of physics.
FYI. Density of sea water(Ï) 64.lbs/ft³
Pressure at bottom of a 1ftx1ftx1ft cube of sea water = Ï/144 in² =.44444 psid/ft
Thus pressure under 5000ft of sea water = 5000x.444444 = 2222.2 psid
Total pressure at ≈5000′ = 14.7+2222.2 = 2237 psia
Still, I think Dr. Wickstrom was writing to an audience of nihilists and crisis mongers who benefit from Henny Pennies, but YMMV. I hope they didn’t spoil their sheets.
(PS Og: Firefox would not stabilize, and I had to use the Google Chrome browser to get here.)
Wierd.
I think they should first run Lindsay Lohan down there so she can suck the chrome off the pipe.
Maybe all those voodoo practitioners and free livers in New Orleans done put God into a smiting mood. After hearing how the Indonesian tsunami and hurricane Katrina were Earth Mother Gaia’s revenge on Bush for his War for Oil, this sounds more rational.
I once told some people “Look, forge-welding is easy; it’s getting everything in the right place and all at the right temperature at the same time that makes is hard.
And then hitting it all just right with a hammer, of course.”
I thought there were some fears that the casing was compromised way down underground, which is why they are drilling the interceptors so deep.