Today’s the day. Or, maybe not.
This will be the first stab at shutting down the well since the April 20 blowout and fire that killed 11 workers on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon.
BP chief executive Tony Hayward told CNN Wednesday morning that the company is still collecting data to determine whether to proceed with the maneuver. “We’ll take a decision within the course of today,” Hayward said.
If he determines that it is safe to proceed, Hayward told NBC’s “Today” show, the procedure is expected to happen Wednesday.
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All the work at depth is performed by the remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), numbering 12 by latest count, and operated from the surface ships while BP engineers monitor the process from Houston. The ROVs have tinkered with the five-story blowout preventer that sits atop the wellhead. They fixed a leaking hydraulic line, for example, using an ordinary wrench pinched by a robotic arm. They also removed the “yellow pod,” the brain of the blowout preventer, and engineers repaired it at the surface before replacing it at depth.
On Tuesday, BP engineers began diagnostic tests on the blowout preventer. This is a critical phase in which the company will learn how much pressure must be overcome when the drilling mud is injected into the well. It could also lead them to abort the maneuver.
“We’ve got a crack team of experts that are going to pore over the diagnostic data,” Wells said. “There is a remote possibility that we would get some information that it wouldn’t work.”
What happens next would be all-important. The mud would have to go somewhere. The hope is that so much of it would be forced into the preventer that, even as some of it surged up the riser pipe and into the water along with oil and gas, much of it would go to the bottom of the well. The well would lose all pressure and would become static. Later, BP would inject cement down the wellbore to permanently seal the well.
“We know we’ll lose some [mud] out the top, but can we pump fast enough to ultimately kill the well?” Wells said. He said the goal is to “outrun the well.”
The danger is that the top kill could worsen the situation. The powerful injection of mud might destabilize the blowout preventer, or punch a bigger hole in the sharp kink in the riser just a few feet above the blowout preventer. If the mud doesn’t beat back the spill, that could mean a mess of mud mixed with a larger flow of oil and gas.
Hey BlueLyon,
I don’t think they a clue what to do. They don’t even know the actual pressure of the oil leaving the pipe, so how do they expect to cap the well?
BP will soon inject drilling mud and concrete into the broken pipeline at a pressure of 50 barrels per minute in an effort to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf. Unless they know the accurate volume of oil, along with the pressure at which it is escaping, there will be little chance of success.
Scientists claim that approximately 50,000 to 100,000+ barrels of oil a day are leaking into our coastal waters. Knowing those approximations, we can roughly calculate how many barrels of oil are escaping from the pipe every minute and how much pressure will be needed to cap the well:
•50,000 barrels a day / 24 hours a day / 60 minutes = 34.72 barrels per minute.
•100,000 barrels a day / 24 hours a day / 60 minutes = 69.44 barrels per minute.
In order for the “Top Kill” plan to work, the drilling mud and concrete must be forced into the pipe at a rate exceeding the pressure at which the oil is escaping. As you can see (above), BP might have a slim chance of success if the pressure from the pipe is below 50 barrels per minute. However, if the oil pressure is above that number (72,000 barrels a day or more), their attempt to seal the well will be ineffective.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_stream.html
http://www.calculateme.com/Volume/Gallons/ToBarrels(Petroleum).htm
Like I said yesterday, I think BP knew exactly how bad this thing was from Day 1. All of this, it seems to me, is kabuki.
You’re right Bluelyon… They knew exactly what was going on and how much oil was spewing into the Gulf, but just like corporations these days, they wanted to minimize their liability and distance themselves from this disaster by pointing fingers and blaming others.
We give corporations too much leeway and power. There have to be controls on what big business can and cannot do; especially when it comes to our economy, our lives and our environment.