BP:- Top Kill Shot (Watch Live)

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In summary, BP is considering a "top kill" procedure to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico but has not yet made a decision. This technique has a 60-70% chance of success but has never been tested at 5,000 feet underwater. Other methods, such as a containment box, have failed. BP may have been trying to preserve the well to finish rigging, but the current situation has likely forced them to pursue the "top kill" option. This was the last resort, as there is a risk that the well may not be able to be used again once killed. The long preparation time for this method may have delayed its implementation. However, the potential political and social consequences of not taking action may
  • #1
Glennage
44
1
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_stream.html"

http://www.cnn.com/"

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/05/26/gulf.oil.spil/index.html?hpt=T1"

Venice, Louisiana (CNN) -- BP's top official said the oil company will make a decision later Wednesday on whether to proceed with a "top kill" procedure designed to contain oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward told CNN that a determination will be made after testing is complete.

"So far, it's looking OK," he said. "But we haven't got all the data we need."

Top kill has worked successfully on above-ground oil wells in the Middle East but has never been tested 5,000 feet underwater.

But all previous attempts by the company to cap the spill have failed. And BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward has given the "top kill" maneuver a 60 percent to 70 percent chance of success.

Fingers crossed it works!
 
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  • #2
Wow I hadn't watched a live stream of it before and I have to say this is just crazy.

What I don't understand is how come BP was allowed to have so much time to decide what to do instead of going right ahead with an attempt to plug it in the way they are going to now. There's absolutely no way they put the other methods they tried at a higher probability for success. This way seems to make the most sense to me and I do not think it matters too much that they are so deep in water.

Were they trying to perserve what they had down there to finish rigging there?

Things I also thought about was putting like a concrete coloumn around it with a hole in the middle that way you could control where they oil went... Or put an upside-down dome with a hole in the bottom for the oil to enter that way you can atleast control how big an area is effected by the oil. I assume these would cost a lot of money, but hardly the amount that BP is going to have to fork out now.
 
  • #3
zomgwtf said:
Or put an upside-down dome with a hole in the bottom for the oil to enter that way you can atleast control how big an area is effected by the oil. I assume these would cost a lot of money, but hardly the amount that BP is going to have to fork out now.
They tried a containment box, but it filled with ice crystals.
 
  • #4
zomgwtf said:
Wow I hadn't watched a live stream of it before and I have to say this is just crazy.

What I don't understand is how come BP was allowed to have so much time to decide what to do instead of going right ahead with an attempt to plug it in the way they are going to now. There's absolutely no way they put the other methods they tried at a higher probability for success. This way seems to make the most sense to me and I do not think it matters too much that they are so deep in water.

Were they trying to perserve what they had down there to finish rigging there?

Things I also thought about was putting like a concrete coloumn around it with a hole in the middle that way you could control where they oil went... Or put an upside-down dome with a hole in the bottom for the oil to enter that way you can atleast control how big an area is effected by the oil. I assume these would cost a lot of money, but hardly the amount that BP is going to have to fork out now.

A kill well does just that. It's totally kills the well, and it's possible that ones it's killed it can't be 'unkilled'. This means you just can't get any more oil from it.

There would have been a cost analysis done, (as this all comes down to money, not 'the right thing') and this is the last stand.
 
  • #5
I imagine BP was working on all these solutions at the same time. This one took the most time to prepare. They had no contengency for a leak at this depth with a breakdown of all the failsafes they normally implement.

This process took the longest to prepare therefore it hasn't been brought to our attention until now. It's not like they had it sitting in the garage and someone just stood up and said, "Why don't we try this thing over here that will probably work instead of all these other ideas?"
 
  • #6
Pattonias said:
I imagine BP was working on all these solutions at the same time. This one took the most time to prepare. They had no contengency for a leak at this depth with a breakdown of all the failsafes they normally implement.

This process took the longest to prepare therefore it hasn't been brought to our attention until now. It's not like they had it sitting in the garage and someone just stood up and said, "Why don't we try this thing over here that will probably work instead of all these other ideas?"

It's just that this one had by far the biggest financial risk if they can't get the well going again in the future. Political and social pressure if driving them to kill the well. It's a contingecy they always had, just not used.
 
  • #7
But the political floodgates being opened that the continued spill are causing have to be far worse than the potential profit that could be made by continued use of this well. If they could have capped it totally in the first week and started drilling again nearby they would have.
 
  • #8
Pattonias said:
But the political floodgates being opened that the continued spill are causing have to be far worse than the potential profit that could be made by continued use of this well. If they could have capped it totally in the first week and started drilling again nearby they would have.
They are already drilling nearby, but it could take 2-3 months to complete.
 
  • #9
I really don't understand the formation of ice in the containment dome, the oil, gas and saltwater mixture coming out of the pipe should be warm enough to compensate for the cooling caused by the expansion of gas ??

Anyone have first hand experience or knowledge of what's at play ?
 
  • #10
RonL said:
I really don't understand the formation of ice in the containment dome, the oil, gas and saltwater mixture coming out of the pipe should be warm enough to compensate for the cooling caused by the expansion of gas ??

Anyone have first hand experience or knowledge of what's at play ?

I thought I heard it was a condensate(?) from a chemical reaction

http://stevenjohnhibbs.wordpress.co...-fails-as-hydrate-ice-crystals-abort-mission/
 
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  • #11
The temp at that level is probably colder then freezing not likely warm at all.
 
  • #12
Form what I understand it was not ice, but methane hydrate. Looks similar, but it is something completely different.
 
  • #13
My stomach is all tied up in knots right now. I keep checking the news in between phone calls, but so far, no luck. The top kill was started about 2:30 PM EDT - three hours ago. My impression was that we should see some results by now, but perhaps it is too soon. The entire procedure is supposed to take about twelve hours.

According to one spokesman for the oil industry, the order of the attempted fixes was based on risk. If this fails, it could make things much worse. Also, it is not known to what extent the bop has been compromised. They were working through the night running tests to determine if the bop could withstand the pressure.
 
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  • #14
I saw a new cam view of the oil spill at cnn... Looks like a ton of oil coming out compared to the other feeds I have seen. However I already had factored for that in my head so wasn't that shocked. I'm still wondering how big the oilfield is?
 
  • #15
magpies said:
I saw a new cam view of the oil spill at cnn... Looks like a ton of oil coming out compared to the other feeds I have seen. However I already had factored for that in my head so wasn't that shocked. I'm still wondering how big the oilfield is?

As for size, if left unchecked, the leak could continue for the rest of your life.

That's a direct quote. This question was addressed on the news one night.
 
  • #16
That doesn't really tell me anything... How long is the rest of my life? How much oil is coming out right now?

Ok so for 24.5 years how much oil would be pumping out?
 
  • #17
Anywhere between 5000 and 70000 barrels a day are flowing out. I tihnk the field the Horizon was drilling was estimated to have 50 million barrels of attainable oil.

So it could continue for anywhere between 2 and 25 years.
 
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  • #18
magpies said:
That doesn't really tell me anything... How long is the rest of my life? How much oil is coming out right now?

The flow appears to be somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 barrels per day [40 gallons per barrel]. No one is sure, but 30k-70k barrels per day seems to be a midrange expectation. The problem is that there is no way to know precisely how much of the flow is natural gas, and how much is oil.

The actual size of the field was never mentioned; only that this could continue for another 50 or 100 years if we did nothing.

The claim that this is only 5k barrels per day has been conclusively falsified. BP was pumping that much one day with the intercept pipe, with little or no noticable change in the size of the leak.
 
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  • #19
So I can expect 50 million barrels of oil to be in the sea in the next 2 years right?
 
  • #20
magpies said:
So I can expect 50 million barrels of oil to be in the sea in the next 2 years right?

Maybe, I think the kill will work. I also think it'll make the well unrecoverable.
 
  • #21
Shadowmaru said:
Yes the Kill shot usually disables the well totally and cannot be re-used.

Fingers crossed this attempt works! For the sake of the animals!

The economy of that entire sector of the US is at stake.
 
  • #22
Shadowmaru said:
I think we all understand the implications for greedy humans and the economy, I was simply pointing out it's not just us in the crap here...

I don't think you do. Greedy humans? We are talking about people's livelihoods. We are talking about damage that could last for generations. We are talking about the loss of a way of life for millions of people. This is looking more and more like an evironmental, social, and an economic disaster.

This top kill had better work. We might still have a chance of minimizing the damage.
 
  • #23
You say that like we arn't greedy humans? Also it's more then just the way of life for millions of people. Of course its a disaster what did you think it was?
 
  • #24
Most people don't recognize the magnitude of the suffering and loss this spill is causing. A former client of mine operates the largest shrimp-processing plant in the region. No shrimp landed, no processing, so no jobs for his employees, causing ripple-effects from lost wages all through their region. Another former client operates multiple ice-plants in the region. Fishermen and fish-brokers are big customers of his. Oops! Another business takes a huge hit. These examples are just the most obvious and prominent cases that ordinary folk can relate to.
 
  • #25
magpies said:
You say that like we arn't greedy humans? Also it's more then just the way of life for millions of people. Of course its a disaster what did you think it was?

Quit trivializing the discussions.
 
  • #26
Crud, the CEO of BP is saying that we won't know if this will work for 24 hours.

Allegedly, so far, so good.
 
  • #27
Ivan Seeking said:
Crud, the CEO of BP is saying that we won't know if this will work for 24 hours.

Allegedly, so far, so good.

I wish we had more information than that. This whole thing has had my stomach in knots for weeks now. I've just felt like shouting, "Someone do something already!"

Still keeping our fingers crossed, I guess.
 
  • #28
Evo said:
They tried a containment box, but it filled with ice crystals.

RonL said:
I really don't understand the formation of ice in the containment dome, the oil, gas and saltwater mixture coming out of the pipe should be warm enough to compensate for the cooling caused by the expansion of gas ??

Anyone have first hand experience or knowledge of what's at play ?

Borek said:
Form what I understand it was not ice, but methane hydrate. Looks similar, but it is something completely different.

Makes sense. At that depth (~1500M), methane gas+water becomes methane hydrate ('an ice-like crystalline structure') below ~20C.

Phase diagram:
phase.gif
 
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  • #29
Ivan Seeking said:
The economy of that entire sector of the US is at stake.
What sector? Fisheries? Oil drilling? Shallow water drilling, or just deep water drilling? Shore based oil drilling?
 
  • #30
mheslep said:
What sector? Fisheries? Oil drilling? Shallow water drilling, or just deep water drilling? Shore based oil drilling?

When I said sector, I meant that geographically. I was referring to the entire Gulf region.

As reported, it is the 29th largest economy in the world.
 
  • #31
magpies said:
I saw a new cam view of the oil spill at cnn... Looks like a ton of oil coming out compared to the other feeds I have seen. However I already had factored for that in my head so wasn't that shocked. I'm still wondering how big the oilfield is?

there are several fields in the gulf, this is one. I don't know what field BP is in.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14678206/

It is indeed a serious problem!


RonL

P.S. we can be thankful that a company as large as BP is the operator, even if it cost them several BILLON dollars, they have the funds and they can still recover their losses if they handle the disaster in a proper manor.

I have a conceren about how the cleanup is being restrained by too much thinking..by our leaders.
 
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  • #32
Ivan Seeking said:
Crud, the CEO of BP is saying that we won't know if this will work for 24 hours. Allegedly, so far, so good.

OK, so 48 hours in total then.

24 hours for his thumbs up. Then another 24 hours before independent confirmation that he's lying.

:biggrin:
 
  • #33
DaveC426913 said:
OK, so 48 hours in total then.

24 hours for his thumbs up. Then another 24 hours before independent confirmation that he's lying.

:biggrin:

I have this sinking sense that the effort has already failed; that they are just going to keep trying for 24 hours. Not only was I under the impression that we should know in a few hours, apparently so was Congress. They too were watching and waiting for results. At about the four-hour mark, the CEO came on tv and made his announcment that we won't know for 24 hours. I strongly suspect that was code for "failure"; at least for the first attempt.

Ugh, I hope I'm wrong. They still have more possible fixes, but this was touted as having the best chance of success.
 
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  • #34
The expert interviewed here is still "cautiously optimistic". He states that a lot of mud is being blown out by the oil and gas, but it sounds as though there might be a chance that enough will accumulate with time to finally kill the well. The interview starts at the 4:00 mark.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-june10/oil1_05-26.html
 
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  • #35
I saw a diagram of how they pump the stuff in and was wondering if it would work better if they just dumped it straight down into it.
 

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