NYT "Engineers Move Cautiously" To Cap Spill

[Jeffersons Ghost]

Cap Slows Gulf Oil Leak as Engineers Move Cautiously

HOUSTON — Oil continued to pour from a runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday as engineers worked to close two of four vents on a capping device lowered onto the gushing riser pipe. “The vents remain open,” Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, who is in charge of the federal response to the oil spill, said at a briefing on Saturday morning.

Admiral Allen said that while engineers were able to bring 6,000 barrels of oil to the surface in a 24-hour period, they were hesitant to close the vents out of fear that if they did so too quickly, water would rush in and form the kind of icy hydrates that doomed a previous attempt to cap the leak.

A technician working on the operation said the engineers were also working slowly and deliberately because of a concern that the volume and velocity of the escaping oil could create so much friction on the inside walls of the new 5,000-foot pipe that it could force it entirely off the cap.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06spill.html?hp

[Jeffersons Ghost]

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