Thursday, May 27, 2010

Oil porn, and my schedule for this upcoming week

Posting will be sporadic other than the daily music for the next week because I'm going to be living out of boxes until everything makes it to the new place. Still, check in - I might manage to set up shop in a coffee shop or something.

I notice that BP is trying to do a top kill and junk shot on the well, which sounds kinda like a porno movie but oh well, and, as usual, it's not working -- and they're lyin', still. One of the folks on the Oil Drum said that there has never in the history of the oil industry been a successful top kill on a flowing oil well -- the only way to do a top kill is to be able to cap the blowout preventer so that the mud being pumped in can't just spurt right back out the top. But capping something that has 15,000 PSI of pressure behind it is easier said than done, especially since the only way to do it is to cut off the bent drill pipe, and the pinch on the bent drill pipe is keeping the gusher spewing way less oil than it otherwise would be spewing.

My thought on that is that there has to be some way to get hydraulic pressure down to the rams on the blowout preventer and get them to pinch shut. I understand that BP tried with their submersibles, but the U.S. Navy has some damn good submersibles, so good that they can cut open a fiber optic line in the middle of the Atlantic and put a tap into it then sew it back together so there's no detectable loss. Once the rams are pinched shut, *then* you can do a successful top kill, since the drilling mud won't just get spurted out the top of the blowout preventer (and you want to do a top kill even if you *do* get the blowout preventer closed, because there's no telling when the blowout preventer will just blow right off the top of the stack if you just let it sit there, the mud introduction manifolds are below the top pinchers so that's possible), but right now BP is just playing games. The Navy has good underwater people, let's use'em.

But wait, I forgot, BP is in charge of this, ole' Barry just stands around saying how much he cares, sorta like a care bear except without as much fur. Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Oily Penguin

Below: A BP spokesperson speaks out about how this is a really, really unusual thing, and how we should not be worried about the possibility of any other similar incident happening.

2 comments:

  1. A couple of nights ago, Rachel showed old clips of a similar event in the Gulf of Mexico off the Mexican shore. BP is doing also the same things that didn't work then, 30 years ago - in 200 ft of water, not a fucking mile.

    La is doomed.

    Lo siento.
    JzB

    ReplyDelete
  2. s/b "all" the same things, not "also."

    My fingers don't always communicate with my brain.

    JzB

    ReplyDelete

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