Quote:
Originally Posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts
Can they just bulldoze the entire BOP stack and then dump concrete on it? It's been a month and a half and they have nothing to show for their efforts. When I was working at Hughes Space and Comm, when we had a severe problem like this, we had multiple teams working on multiple solutions that could be tried one right after the other. Looks like these guys are like "hmm, let's try this, and if it doesn't work, we'll go back to the drawing board and try to come up with something else."
Bottomline, it certainly doesn't look like this cap is working. Ever try to install a nozzle on the end of a garden hose because you're too lazy to walk across the lawn and turn it off (I admit, I've been). It's never pretty. This seems to be having the same effect. Why is the pipe coming out of the cap so small? Is the cap full of seawater? I guess it has to be to equalize the pressure. Are they pumping out the seawater now and hoping the oil will flow upwards into the vacuum?
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The problem is the oil in the pipe is about 5000 psi, and the hydrostatic pressure is only ~2300 psi. Bulldozing the pipe and dropping concrete on it is not going to stop the flow.
Now, if they get a "decent" seal, where only about 10% is leaking, they could try pumping in drilling fluid again, and stop the oil, and then eventually start pumping in concrete and plug the bore.
As far as activating the BOP, I've wondered the same thing. Why isn't there a simple manual shut off in the BOP? You could use a gate valve to come in from the side. I also wonder why they don't try to hook up fresh hydraulics to the BOP and see if they could make it work. Maybe they know something we don't know, which is that this BOP would never work properly...