New Thread at TOD--A Very Dynamic Situation and the Top Kill Setback

[profgoose]

sorry everybody--wouldn't let me edit the other one to change the address.

latest "live" thread with insights and pics: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6516

this morning's comment thread: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6515

Relevant links to top kill procedure (scroll to comments in each, they're very good.)

Deepwater Oil Spill - Permissions and Concerns about Top Kill
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6513

Deep Water Spill - Waiting for Top Kill (more updated tech)
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6509

The Gulf Deepwater Oil Spill - the Top Kill Attempt (the technical aspect of what just happened)
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6505

The Gulf Deepwater Oil Spill, barriers, flow rates, and top kill
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6501

[phantom power]

1. I heard it worked.

Did it work?

[gateley]

2. If you go to the TOD live thread, they're beginning to question it,and have

posted a couple of news articles supporting their observations.

[gateley]

3. I keep refreshing the Live thread - they've posted a couple of headlines that

indicate that indicate more has leaked than they'd hoped. One said they've shut it down. Theses are not confirmed I don't think.

[phantom power]

4. This was interesting:

Goose: Hey ROCK, what's your thoughts on already having gone through a tanker of mud in 8 hours? That's a lot of loss right?

It seems to me this thing may be far from over... :(

ROCKMAN: Goose -- I KNOW nothing but I suspect it might not be working. I thought of a way folks could look at the effort in a manner they can more easily visualize. Here goes: there is a fire hydrant open full force. Putting out 7 ppg water at 80 psi at a RATE OF 500 GALLONS PER MINUTE.. Now I want to stop that water from coming up the main by pointing another fire hose at it. Unfortanately I can't connect the hose directly to the hydrant because the threads are messed up (i.e. bad BOP). So all I can do is hold the end of the hose close to the opening of the hydrant. My hose is putting out 500 gallons of 16.5 ppg mud at a pressure of 80 psi. So can I stop the water flowing from the hydrant? Nope...the pressures are the same. At best the two streams hit each other and the total flows out of the gap.

This is the problem I've had with the top kill from the start. I've been on rigs where we've pumped a successful kill pill. But the well was shut in. All we had to do was pump in at a pressure greater that the shut in pressure of the well. The pressured mud would push whatever was in the well downwards. But the BP well isn't shut in...it's flowing. How much force do you need to apply to a river to make it flow upstream? I know folks were holding out for the top kill to work so I didn't want to be too negative. But if they couldn't get a very tight seal on the BOP I couldn't envision how they could get the flow to stop let alone flow backwards down the csg. But as I'v said before I'm not an engineer...just pretend to be sometimes on TOD.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6515#comment-631020