Best case: Another week of unabated oil geyser

Source: BusinessWeek

VENICE, La.

Federal officials shut down fishing from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle on Sunday because of the uncontrolled gusher spewing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and the environmental disaster is still expected to take at least a week to cut off.

Even that toxic scenario may be too rosy because it depends on a low-tech strategy that has never been attempted before in deep water.

The plan: to lower 74-ton, concrete-and-metal boxes into the gulf to capture the oil and siphon it to a barge waiting at the surface. Whether that will work for a leak 5,000 feet below the surface is anyone's guess; the method has previously worked only in shallower waters.

If it doesn't, and efforts to activate a shutoff mechanism called a blowout preventer continue to prove fruitless, the oil probably will keep gushing for months until a second well can be dug to cut off the first. Oil giant BP PLC's latest plan will take six to eight days because welders have to assemble the boxes.


Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9FEVUFO0.htm

"Hey, we just made a hole in a high-pressure deposit, 5000 feet below the sea that blew out our rig and we can't stop it! What do we do?"

Brainium's Reply: "Well ... ah ... ummm ... let's make ANOTHER hole and see what happens! That'll fix it ... duhhh!"

It reminds me of one of several Three Stooges fixes.

And most of their solutions will only make things worse! :crazy: :-(

Chemicals Meant To Break Up BP Oil Spill Present New Environmental Concerns
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=533211&mesg_id=533211

... it's kind of like trepanation I guess.

1525 engraving of trepanation by Peter Treveris

sorry for the cap lock, but that is how the line was delivered :hi:

We've never had to deal with anything like this before. It's not a 'slow Katrina' or "America's Chernobyl". It's an untold amount of crude oil pumping out of the earth's crust for an undetermined amount of time. It's human's out of their depth - literally and figuratively.

This is developing to be quite possibly the most disturbing event I've ever witnessed in my lifetime (41 years).

A very sad thanks for posting, my friend. :hug:

This tragedy makes other news stories seem like news light. ;( :hug:

This is really disturbing!

The damn thing's still leaking, with no end in sight. We're still seeing repercussions from the Exxon Valdez, and that was in 1989 and was finite. It doesn't get much worse than this... ;( :hi:

;(

King of Swamp Castle: When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.

Unfortunately it doesn't really inspire confidence.

Looking at it makes me think Tom Foreman's clumsy graphics on AC360 were a fairly accurate representation: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x461772