BP is Looking at Cutting the Riser Pipe, Greatly Incresing the Flow

Source: AP

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — Top hats and junk shots are on the list of possible next steps as BP, casting about after a 100-ton containment box failed, settles in for a long fight to stop its uncontrolled oil gusher a mile under the Gulf of Mexico.

Engineers at BP PLC were wrestling with a shopping list of ways to plug the well or siphon off the spewing crude, including a smaller containment box, dubbed a top hat, and injecting debris including shredded rubber into the well as a stopper, called a junk shot.

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Among plans under consideration for the gusher, BP is looking at cutting the riser pipe, which extends from the well, undersea and using larger piping to bring the gushing oil to a drill ship on the surface, a tactic considered difficult and less desirable because it will increase the flow of oil.

A junk shot would be followed by cement to seal the leak and the technique is something company officials said they might try next week. The smaller container could be tried first, around the middle of this week.

An estimated 3.5 million gallons of oil have spilled since an explosion on April 20 on the drilling rig, the Deepwater Horizon, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. At that pace, the spill would surpass the 11 million gallons spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster by next month.

Above the oil leak, waves of dark brown and black sludge crashed into the support ship Joe Griffin. The fumes there were so intense that a crew member and an AP photographer on board had to wear respirators while on deck.

Philip Johnson, a petroleum engineering professor at the University of Alabama, said cutting the riser pipe and slipping a larger pipe over the cut end could conceivably divert the flow of oil to the surface.

"That's a very tempting option," he said. "The risk is when you cut the pipe, the flow is going to increase. ... That's a scary option, but there's still a reasonable chance they could pull this off."

Johnson was less optimistic that a smaller containment box would be less susceptible to being clogged by icelike crystals.

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The prospect of cutting the riser pipe makes me sick to my stomach.

Why don't they tap that containment box 1/2 way down it's length instead of at the top-a pressure relief where the top tap now is ?

than being directly over the leak. The most they were to be able to get with the dome right over the leak was about 85%. Plus the mixture would have a lot of water in it. They would still need to stop the leak.

I would say that the contents would solidify regardless of the location of the tapping point. The principle is like leaving a sink tap open a small - but significant - amount in the winter to prevent it from freezing. Regarding the gulf attempt, it does not seem that the proposed tap size is significant enough to avoid the solidifying effects, given the enormous volume emanating from the fissure.

It keeps getting worse.

The Marx Brothers, or The Three Stooges, or a barrel of monkeys, or... :mad:

Drilling for oil in the ocean with NO DISASTER PLAN or ANY PLAN. :mad:

Killing the oceans with oil thus killing the planet.

like a smoldering cigarette butt lying in the street.

the Valdez was like a lab tech dropping a pint of blood on the floor, while this is like a surgeon cutting a major artery.