Engineering question about the oil disaster

Since the drill hole is going through a lot of rock it seems that collapsing the drill hole at any point would seal the leak. The drill hole is a relatively tiny passage through an immense mass. The drill hole is an unnatural configuration... it's natural end state is to be filled in by gravity. (At some point enough rock or other material will shift to block the hole with enough mass to overcome the oil pressure, though it may take eons to happen naturally.)

(Important Note: The diagram is not to scale. The drill hole snakes through more than three miles of rock.)

If the drill hole was sufficiently disrupted at any point the (disrupted/broken up) rock would settle to block the drill hole. Like stomping on an anthill.

One thing we can do is blow stuff up. We excel at that. Explosive disruption of the hole would kill lots of fish, but less than more oil will. The oil cannot burn down near the ocean floor. (No free oxygen.) And the oil flow is limited by the smallest point of the drill hole; disrupting it at the top would not make the drill hole more capacious at the bottom.

The question is not whether it would work. I take it as a given that it would not work or we would do it.

My question is why it wouldn't work.

talk it over here.

I am not sure what the well head pressure is on this particular well but you have to remember that it was enough to overcome the drilling process already.

The most I can come up with is for analogy is, turn on your garden hose on full, then try to stop the flow by shoveling dirt on it.

what are the natural consequences of depressurizing an unfilled void, will pressure naturally equalize or is an implosion of a void predictable?

that would take literally years depending on the formation.

Also, the resevoir does naturally subside into itself(very generic answer). Dealing with this is part of the lifetime maintenance of the well.

Not familiar with how oil wells work. Just seems if there is an empty hole where oil was and it is a mile under the ocean, water would be heavy enough to crush the hole, and maintenence of the well doesn't appear to working out so well here.

Shoveling silt into the oil hole would be futile because the oil pressure would blow out the silt as you shoveled it in.

But smashing rock (below the ocean floor) is a different matter.

The pressure involved is high by human standards but mild by geologic standards. For instance, the pressure from oil wells doesn't erode the surrounding rock in the manner of a dam-break. If it did then all oil wells would become gaping holes. We usually have more trouble keeping the holes open than closing them.

But where I agree with you that pressure is probably a big part of the problem is the practical side of things.

The oil pressure may well make it almost impossible to deliver charges into the existing drill hole below the surface -- the oil would be pushing out whatever explosive device you tried to insinuate into the hole.

usaully several thousand feet. After time the interior pipe does erode and needs to be replaced from the abrasion of the oil and other material coming up.

Exploding something to "crush" the pipe will not work because of the casing and cement. Even if you drill down next to it and detonate a "perf string", all you would do, most likey, is create a larger hole for the oil to escape.

The right explosion is like blowing out a match.

cut off the old "tree" and install a new one.

rock deep enough. Trick would be sink a hole next to the leak and get a charge into the hole.

Turn on your compressor and set the valve to about 90 PSI...

Now put on your blower attachement and see if you can keep your finger over the end when pulling the trigger

Your garden hose is under about 30-40 psi.

You can't just stuff a cork in it.

I don't know how the hell we could get enough conventional explosives down there to do any good.

Don

Kidding, mostly.

I think you are right that the answer to my question is more practical than conceptual. We could not deliver the right charge to the right place as a practical matter.

Not a good outcome.