Dumb question #34b: Why did it take them a month to try "top kill" ?

this is something they've done before on land... it's not like a brand new idea someone just thought of.

all the pipes and valves for injecting matter into the well have been in place all this time, no?

from the news reports I've read, once they got the OK from the coast guard to do it, it was only a day or so until the procedure began.

am I missing something? or should this have been done on day 5 or 6 or so?

I'm no oil industry expert, but my guess would be that once they seal the well, they can't use it again and it will cost them money to seal it permanently. Greed is always the answer.

in fact IS being drilled into the same vein. (Yea I know it's not called a vein, but I couldn't think of what it's called.) The oil that remains there will not be lost. I'm sure they can still pump it from the relief well that they're currently drilling.

It took them this long because this is not an operation you can just do at the drop of a hat without severe risk of making the situation worse, such as blowing the whole casing apart and eliminating any possible chance of stopping the leak prior to the relief wells (which are the only things that will permanently stop it) being finished.

This has been discussed at length at places like The Oil Drum by actual industry experts. You might want to consult them.

what's been done before. There were many, many engineers doing calculations, estimates & computer animations to make sure they got it as right as they possibly could. Apparently if it's done wrong, the pressure inside the pipes could cause additional leaks and make matters much worse than they already are. I don't begridge them taking the time to make sure they're doing the best they can. If they had taken that much caution i the past, this whole mess would never have happened!

Plus they had to get permission to try it, if I understand correctly.

"Top kill has been used before to plug out-of-control wells, but never at the 5,000-foot depth of the BP leak. Underwater robots operated from the surface had to do the mechanical preparation on the seafloor, connecting two lines running from the pumping vessels to the blowout preventer.

Roomfuls of scientists spent weeks planning the maneuver, relying on supercomputers and gamma-ray imagers to help make crucial pressure calculations. Engineers worked through Tuesday night, running tests. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel-winning physicist, joined the diagnostic team in Houston.

The biggest start-up challenge, Suttles said, was analyzing the pressure readings and other data to make sure conditions were right in the remote wellhead. "You can't touch it. You can't feel it. You can't go down there yourself," he said.

If the top kill isn't properly executed, BP officials have said it could increase the flow of oil by further damaging the blowout preventer."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-top-kill-20100527,0,5716578.story?page=1

doesn't generate income. They wanted to get it under control
to "capture" and sell the oil. The relief well is the backup
plan for getting the oil but it cost a lot more to re-drill the site
than get the existing hole under control.
They delayed the kill solution on purpose.

just saying.

Also they are using the SAME play book as every other disaster for the last 30 years. They are predictable. Next is the relief wells.

is not known and probably not that good.

for the Australian well last year, which wasn't that shallow either, took relief wells... this one will be a relief well or two (they are already digging two)

which requires careful planning ahead of time.

There is a possibility that this could make the leak worst, so the scientists and the engineers needed to study the plan carefully before implementing anything.

the fact that this procedure prevents them from getting any oil from this well, and the other procedures they've tried would have allowed them to capture more oil after the blowout was controlled?

will be infinitely cheaper than what they've already spent, before fines and suits, on trying to stop this. It was an enormous engineering task with a shaky shot at success. It underscores the reason we shouldn't be drilling here in the first place.

But no, it wasn't delayed to "save the well."

The containment dome was tried first because it had the lowest risks of something going wrong.

Even if that was successful, the relief well was going to plug up the well making it unusable anyways.

Having a foreign company drill oil in the gulf and then sell it to China or Brazil or elsewhere on the open market is really going to give us energy independence and bring down the price of oil. After all. There is more oil in America than in the Persian Gulf. Listen to Rush Limblob.

I mean but.


Where are my car keys? I think I'll go out and guzzle some gas.

Because top kills have only been done on land before, according to what I have read on the internet.

You don't change an engine in a car because it overheats. You check the level of coolant in the radiator. Then you check the hoses. Then you check the belt that drives the water pump. Then you check the fan clutch, and so on. The VERY last step would be changing the engine because of some kind of internal problem that couldn't be fixed otherwise. The main objective is not to make the problem worse by attempting a fix more complicated than what is indicated.

due to the collapse of the rig BP had to rebuild some of them. Secondly, there is risk when pumping the mud at to high a pressure they could blow the pipes and makes it worse, so this a risky operation that is why they for things like the top hat first. Third oilfields like this massive it's not like this is only spot they can get the oil from no one with any amount logic would believe that they wouldn't have stopped it if they could

fucking take over. :tinfoilhat:

He said they had to get together a large arsenal of very rare equipment from all over the world to do this. It took them time to find it and get it to the site.

It has been answered several times over the last few days though. You just might have missed it. They were trying to save the oil to save money, same as before the oil started spewing out. They were trying to save what really matters, product.

it is SOP for plugging a gusher, albeit its never done at these depths before. I dont think it was to save the oil as some have been saying.. it is my understanding this well was just exploratory anyway and would not have been used for production even if no problems. However, it still makes you wonder why the long delay in attempting this. Maybe just very complicated and required a lot of lead time to prepare.. Still think an investigation is needed.

The process has never been tried at this depth or pressure. Second, it took a team of scientists and engineers to assess the situation and design an approach. Under normal circumstances they would connect to the riser pipe, which is broken. The team of scientists and engineers had to look at gamma ray images of the BOP to figure out which parts of it were sufficiently intact and set in a manner to allow a connection to pump high pressure mud in a way that would have the desired effect. Beyond this, they apparently had to get equipment flown in from various places around the planet.

Even the mud itself is a specially prepared concoction for this purpose, and you need quite a bit of it.

As soon as people got really pissed and started demanding responsibility from the parties involved, they plugged it?

shows the total disregard for the consequences of a blow out. The arrogance, the criminal negligence.

I think if they could have slowed or stopped this thing on Day 1 in ANY way, they WOULD have. But when this deep well blew, it's clear they did not have a contingency plan in place.

I do buy the idea that they needed some time to get their act together--time and effort that should have been put into prevention up front. The attempt to cap this well has all been experimental, it's obvious, to see if methods used in shallower conditions will work. The Gulf region was risked to save a buck, even as BP makes obscene profits.

As in Canada, there should be NO well permits without a relief well being drilled at the same time. That is the minimum IMO. This might make deep wells less attractive. NO permits on these deep wells at all is what should happen. Offshore drilling should be phased out. No new wells.

Begin immediate transition to the realistic future, where oil will be scarce, and not cheap.