Dr. Sludgelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Junk Shotting And Love Teh Bomb
Maybe those wacky Russians had it right and the best chance at actually shutting off the bleeding earth below the once and future Deepwater Horizon platform is to bomb the damn thing shut. From Jeremy Hsu via CSM:
Using a nuclear explosion to try to plug the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico might sound like overkill, but a Russian newspaper has suggested just that based on past Soviet successes. Even so, there are crucial differences between the lessons of the past and the current disaster unfolding.
The Russians previously used nukes at least five times to seal off gas well fires. A targeted nuclear explosion might similarly help seal off the oil well channel that has leaked oil unchecked since the sinking of a BP oil rig on April 22, according to a translation of the account in the daily newspaper Komsomoloskaya Pravda by Julia Ioffe of the news website True/Slant.
Weapons labs in the former Soviet Union developed special nukes for use to help pinch off the gas wells. They believed that the force from a nuclear explosion could squeeze shut any hole within 82 to 164 feet (25 to 50 meters), depending on the explosion’s power. That required drilling holes to place the nuclear device close to the target wells.
Yeah, yeah I know …. oooooh spooky nukes! But we have a whole catalog of conventional bunker busters, couldn’t one of these mothers of all bombs (MOABs) do the trick? I don’t know, I am not a deepwater oil well implosion expert. But you know what hasn’t worked? The big top hat, the little top hat, the giant sippy straw, the blow out preventer, toxic dispersant sold by a BP subsidiary and the top kill and junk shot BP blathers about are laughable on their face. The solution ideas to date have been straight out of the Wile E. Coyote Acme School of BP Profitology. And the Ferengi like addiction to oil profit is exactly the issue as BP has clung to every bone headed idiotic play available that will keep their precious oil well viable for production; all the while bleeding out its black death to the Gulf. BP would literally rather kill the Gulf and screw the citizenry than destroy its investment.
Now I first mentioned the bomb idea about a week ago, kind of tongue in cheek, in some of our backstage discussions (the theory is now known as the “bmaz bomb”). But I am not alone. Oh no, not alone at all; there are legitimate people going there too. Christopher J. Brownfield is a former nuclear submarine ranking officer in the US Navy and has a subsequent academic background in international energy policy. Brownfield has the same thought I have regarding the possibility of using conventional explosives to shut the well off:
But there could be be a third option that Obama might bring to the table, once we recognize that BP is just as concerned about salvaging its precious asset as it is about stopping the spill. Our military could potentially use a carefully placed combination of conventional explosives to collapse the well. Our technology is much better than that of the Soviet Union in 1966, so we should be able to make this work without having to go nuclear. I’m confident that the U.S. Navy, the Army Corps of Engineers, and some private-sector organizations could come together and make this happen. The only question is whether Obama will be bold enough to take charge of this problem at the risk of his presidency slipping down the deep, dark well.
Would it work? Heck, I dunno. But it sounds a little more plausible than hair brained schemes BP and the government have put their collective heads together to produce so far. I know this, out here in the west they use explosives to seal off mine shafts all the time, and quite effectively. You would think that the right experts could devise a solution that would close off a sufficient portion of the narrow well hole here to seal it permanently.
There is a lot of experience in controlled implosions under a variety of circumstances. Would it be harder a mile under the sea? Sure, but if we have the technology to be drilling there and two miles further down from the sea floor, then we ought to be able to figure this out too. If it destroys BP’s precious well, that is just an extra benefit; they don’t deserve it anyway.
As profound nukulur scholar Major King Kong would say, “Wahoooooooo”. Bomb the sucker!
[graphic by the one and only twolf and thanks to Eli for some terminology help]
Big problem – the Russians weren’t working under the ocean.
While something big going boom – nclear or conventional – might work, we have to consider it likely that, despite being designed to work in all sorts of environments, nukes (or big conventional bombs, for that matter) are not designed to work under the ambient pressure a mile under water. I’m sure (it seems inevitable from an engineering perspective) that there are one or more openings in the casings (outer shells) of just about all of them – for stuff like fuzes, guidance, test ports, whatever. At that depth, the water would get in in a heartbeat and short the thing out.
If Obama really wanted to get this fixed, he’d designate the head of BP as an international terrorist (plenty of precedent – remember all the work the FBI put in on finding a couple greenies who torched some luxury homes on inholdings in wild areas out West, designating them environmental terrorists. And the animal rights folks in Jersey, who got convicted of terrorism for sending masses of junk faxes to an animal testing lab (and other stuff)) and, while he was enroute to Bagram, tell him his family might soon be joining him (just like those folks in Pakistan, material supporters), and then tell the second-in-command at BP “you’re next, material supporter”.
But, putting one’s bootheel on the neck of a corporation to make them do something is un-American and the President has to prove, every hour of every day, how American he is (to an audience which will never be convinced).
It might be important here to find how the condition of the one that got dropped in the water off Spain (I think) by accident. I seem to recall that it was recovered late.
Remember, that one was found on the ocean floor by a hardhat diver (Brashear, the man portrayed in the movie by Cuba Gooding, Jr.). Not nearly as deep as this wellhead.
I suspect that naval weapons are designed to work at that depth, but that’s a world of difference away from a mile down.
Wasn’t a naval weapon – it fell off one of our warplanes. Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash
Correct – it was a B-52 with 4 on board; one got separated from the plane and landed in deep water.
But, the point I was trying to make was that comparing that incident to this is seriously apples and oranges. Simply because the great pressure a mile down would almost certainly lead to a leak into the weapon, any weapon would likely be unusable at a mile’s depth regardless of whether it was an AF or Naval weapon. The Spanish incident took place – in part – at a depth which was shallow enough that a hardhat diver was able to find and recover the weapon,but that was only after they managedto haul the weapon up from over 2500 feet. And it didn’t matter whether it could – or could not – work after immersion. No one was relying on it to do so.
You raise valid questions. But I have not seen anybody say it cannot be done for any of these reasons. May well be the case, but I would like to at least see the discussion take place.
I doubt that’s true, because the U.S. military tested nuclear weapons deep underwater many years ago. Here is archival video of Operation Hardtack – a series of 1958 nuclear tests in and around Enewetak Atoll. The Wahoo shot was a 10 kton detonation at a depth of 3,000 feet underwater (3:30 in video). The explosion sent water 1,750 feet into the air and caused a tidal surge of 12 feet to nearby islands (11:15 in video).
I think you misheard the tape and/or drew conclusions not supported by the tape.
The tape says the bomb was suspended in water 2000 feet deep. It does not say how deep the bomb itself was (something of really substantial intelligence value b/c that information could be used, inter alia, for all sorts of calculations of weapon effects and about how US bombs were made), nor did it even imply that the bomb was on the bottom. Note, too, that the tape indicates there was a crater formed by the shallow-water shot (and it gives the dimensions) but it makes no mention of a crater from the “Wahoo” deep-water shot.
Finally, a fair implication is that the units in use were test units and not off-the-shelf tactical-ready warheads.
So, while this indicates we’d have a huge splash and wave, and a contamination problem. The film notes “below an acute exposure level”, which is not “uncontaminated” by any stretch of the imagination. Rather, “acute” exposure is pretty bad.
Just for the heck of it:
What if it didn’t work?
What is the “worst case” scenario, if “something” goes “wrong”?
Should we imagine it?
Is this an experiment or a gamble?
Should we all be sanguine about this?
Could it make “things” worse?
Questions? Questions! Questions.
DW
Aw jeez, can’t we just have some fun for once?
I think we should have a blast.
(As often as opossumal, these daze.)
What else can ya do to “top” a blowout?
(Seriously, bmaz, ya need ta loosen up!Yer jus’ plain wicked, man/”G”!!!)
;~DW
To loosely quote a famous protest song:
“And you know profits can only be won,
If we blow it all to kingdom come.”
-Apologies to Joe McDonald/Fish
“Can’t we just have some fun”
George Carlin the genius always helping keep things in perspective
“The planet is fine. The people are fucked”
Sums it up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw
1) Some reports have BP drilling to 20K-30K ft, FAR past the permit for 11K ft. So, MORE PSI Pressure issues.
2) Tiber Field holds some 3-6 BILLION Barrels of oil, half that volume of gas.
3) And we want to use explosives that might just blow the top of that Tiber Field and let it all out?
That’s MY layman’s worst nightmare.
You?
;-)
Your question is SO Vital, in lieu of Bmaz’s post and the Wiley E Coyote Acme School Of . . . . ideas.
I find it insane anyone would consider explosives to seal this puppy. Besides, BP and Obama don’t WANT to seal it, never have. They wanna staunch the flow so they can extract product for profits later.
They’re still fucking trying to save the well for later development.
However, Obama is drilling himself into a one term presidency if he don’t bail out of the oil industry’s clutches.
And he has to bail soon . . . . because this disaster is gonna make Katrina look puny. And Obama OWNS this one all his self now, it’s LONG past the Bush Admin that GRANTED these off shore deep water leases back in ’03.
And as other Pups have shown, there are wells at 10K ocean floor depth, that are actually now EXTRACTING and producing oil! Pumping time bombs, methinks, each and every one of them.
Well, they’re going to put more wells into that formation, if the permits are granted. This well was going to be capped anyway.
And as noted elsewhere, I disagree with this approach. The more I’ve read about methane, methane hydrates and underwater seeps, the more concerned I am that detonating a weapon below the sea floor in that area would set off a chain reaction, the outcome of which we cannot predict.
The very reason this well failed is the reason we cannot trust setting off a bomb, in other words. And yeah, I could see it having a catastrophic tectonic effect; the entire continental shelf is one big sink of hydrocarbons.
[That last clause practically made the room sway. And I already suspect that the real problem is that there is no solution beyond letting the thing run down, so I’m already familiar with abysses.]
I wonder, does next week’s proposal differ in any way from the original situation? Wouldn’t there still be a problem of sealing off the flow tightly enough before the concrete is poured so that the gases don’t infiltrate the concrete? Maybe I don’t have a good enough image in mind of what they would be trying to do.
Illustration of top kill:
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/graphic_shows_how_leaking_oil.html
Yes, this is another brilliant BP/Wile E. Coyote/Acme plan this “Top Kill”. All we have to do is pump a bunch of stuff a mile down and concurrently through several passageways in the blow out preventer – the very device that was so broken and unusable we are in this position to start with. Sounds like a piece of cake!
Well, just looking at the drawing, it seems fairly straightforward, if you assume the direction of flows occurs as illustrated. We pump sticky stuff in, plug up the BOP hole below the broken riser, and we’re done.
Which makes me wonder: if this is a plausible solution, why wasn’t it tried as soon as they realized the BOP was too damaged to work as intended? Is it because there is a substantial risk that this will create more breaks at the BOP, even another, larger, blowout and compound the problem?
Why do we think the stuff will just flow in as pictured?
And, as you quite correctly point out, if this had any real shot, why would it have not been done right from the get go?
Because then the well would be declared unusable.
It would be a shut down scenario. All that work for naught.
No extraction.
That’s been the issue from day one.
And Obama has been on THAT side of the issue from day one, too.
Only now, the evidence of the DAMAGE that’s being done and will be done is overwhelming.
Obama gotta switch sides here, quick, to save any shot at winning in for ’12 and a second term.
I’m playing with numbers backstage.
If this is gushing at 5,000 BBL/day (ha!), then the well would have been 1.3% of BP’s Gulf production, or .2% of BP’s worldwide production.
However, if this is gushing at 70,000 BBL/day, then the well would have been 18% of their Gulf production, or 2.7% of their global production.
That might explain the delay.
The best estimates are somewhere in between those numbers, but as the pressure drops, the flow should slow, they think.
(The experts have some idea how much oil is in that formation, but they don’t really know how much will come out in this mess.)
Ah ha! Right to the BOTtom of it.
(Rumor has it that the name “Top Kill” is discomfiting certain toffs and swells; some unmentionable phobia, or paranoia, apparently …)
The elegant simplicity of your plan assures its inevitable success.
I recall a chemistry set, which my parents were assured was “safe”. And so it was, therefore, I improved upon it.
But this, this is physics, bmaz, and, as you’re a lawyer, the laws of fizzsicks, from the few bad apples of Newtonian clockworkings to the problematic relations between quantumescent photons and all other matters at opposite ends of the ‘tooniverse, are clear, transparent, and obvious to you.
While I am still planning on looking for fulcrums, somewhere between a rock and that fabled, and apparently, ubiquitous “hard place”. But first. I need to get a round to-it.
If I find two of them, would you like me to send one of them your way?
DW
Thanks, I’ll pore over this.
Methane hydrates appear to be relatively stable at the temperature and pressure a mile underwater; it is when they are depressurized as they rise to the surface that problems seem to present. A little localized extra explosive power might not be a bad thing anyway. The thought of some giant cascading chain explosion that spreads out ad infinitum seems somewhat fantastical.
I’ve already seen a video of an experiment conducted by a submersible robot; not certain of depth, but the hydrates are very touchy, are not stable. They can phase change from gas to crystals and back again merely by being touched at that pressure.
Look, if we can’t be certain the amount of heat from setting concrete around the well didn’t trigger a phase change from crystals to gas, what makes you think the heat and resulting rapid change in pressure from an explosion won’t change crystals to gas?
And how far does the change in pressure and heat from an explosive device reach in that environ? can it set off a chain reaction in the hydrates across a large area under the sea floor? Show me it won’t. I’m not signing onto any cure that’s potentially worse than the problem.
Them is among the “serious” questions, Rayne, that must, reasonably, be asked and, comprehensively, answered before General Feelgood gets his button.
The possibility that this “solution” could make things much worse, is no little thing.
Let us see who understands that, among the calls for “action”.
Clueless people should not be encouraged to excess. Ever.
DW
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. You get some of it in the atmosphere, things heat up, more gets into the atmosphere… depending on where the thresholds are, and how much of the stuff is there, and how close bubbling up it is, you will get a positive feedback loop eventually.
But of course, we don’t know anything about the thresholds, so it’s not a problem. Now, it apparently is not, but I do not think that is the point.
It is the “reasoning”: If you don’t know what you are doing, go nuclear. It’s the Anmerican Way. We can’t do demolition with conventional explosives because the site is way down there, we can’t be bothered, and it’s work, so let’s just use a bigger bomb.
Maybe all those endocrine disruptors have over the post-war generations already taken their toll. It is sure incomprehensible how civilization came to be in the first place, looking at the current crew.
Phreakin jeebuzz, that outbigs MY worst case nightmare!!!
Good one, hoss.
Yeah, let’s heat up frozen methane hydrates and watch them expand UPWARDS.
I agree with Rayne
Say ya blow it up; then what? Is there a cosmic Monty Hall asking you which door opens into the law of unintended consequences?
What happens to all the methane?
Example: Rabbits in Australia
YMMV
Alright. Come on; let’s be sensible as opposed to hysterical here. There is not one shred of evidence I have seen of some cataclysmic chain reaction of methane explosion. Secondly, whatever methane does explode turns into normal hydrocarbon emissions, it does not magically traverse to the atmosphere as pure methane. There is no reason to believe that the necessary explosion to seal the well, if it could actually be done at all, would be any more disruptive of methane hydrate structures than powerful earthquakes that have afflicted the region in the past. I am not saying it is not a concern, it is; however, some of the dire predictions are a little over the top it appears to me (not that I have any better clue than the people making them). The point is that it should be discussed, not ruled out as a matter of course on the basis of non-expert innate fear. And as far as damage, what exactly do you think is going to happen from an unmitigated oil gusher going off as is, or worse, for the foreseeable future?
I agree with most of what you say, bmaz. Every sane method must be considered and widely discussed.
My concern is that we make the gusher even more so.
The real question is how much of this “deposit” is going to be released into the environment?
I do not see that this nation has ANY more pressing “business”, at the moment, than dealing, straight away and up-front with this catastrophe, before it becomes calamity.
DW
I wasn’t arguing … or hysterical ;-) I was spitballing
The link about the methane was about the release of methane into the atmosphere to speed up global warming – not about it exploding
But then again, if you want to observe the law of unintended consequences; if they do use a nuke, they better find out where all the unexploded ordinance is
Susie Madrak @ C&L – BP Was Drilling In A Mine Field! Gulf of Mexico Is Major Dumping Ground For Unexploded Bombs.
And make sure that it doesn’t set them off to release the methane
Again, not arguing. Just saying they better actually use people with expertise outside of BP’s influence to plan this out
I have no idea whether this would work or not, but if they do give it a try, they really need to hire the “Boom goes the dynamite” YouTube guy to narrate the webcam live feed.
The blogger formerly known as bmaz has been taken over by aliens, who are either trying to help us into the future or eliminate it. We have asked NOAA to sort this out.
Look on the bright side. THe tourism in the Gulf would immediately skyrocket (erm, excuse the pun) as surfers the world over tried to catch the nuclear waves.
Where is our local Surfer Dude? He would be up for this!
Was thinking that myself. Though he might not like the gooey state of the water. It’s like training wheels for a surfer. Randiego is way beyond that.
We desperately need A Bigger Bang.
Or a bigger boat ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gciFoEbOA8
If we build this giant badger…
On the positive side, when the oil gets to Cuba (and how much longer can that be at this point?) they’ll have to close GTMO.
What an excuse to move them, to the wild west show known as Bagram(?)now that it has been declared a legal lawless zone.
Might be time to speed up our manned Mars program with some effort towards colonization, right alongside this bmaz bomb that could free vast methane hydrate deposits. I mean, vast. Underpinning the tectonic plates, you say?
I mean, the methane in the Arctic and Siberian permafrost is gonna kill us all when it thaws before 2020; methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. So why not blow the system early, as long as our space program is injected with some hurry-up?
These days, it just feels like a good sci-fi novel, the part right before things going horribly wrong reach a terrible tipping point everyone should have seen coming but didn’t. Does anyone else have that sense of foreboding, that we are in a period that will look very, very different in hindsight?
The System As Is (social, political, economical) is unsustainable.
The collapse is inevitable.
It’s just a matter of when, and how. Be it economical, or environmental.
Something’s gotta give, and we the people are at risk along with the food chain below us.
A bit early, but I might need a glass of Merlot from this thread to steady the heebie jeebies I got from thinking of worst case scenario’s with nukes or conventional ‘splosives.
Nice work Bmaz, and also kudo’s for the incredibly varied and detailed and well imagined thoughts of all who comment.
Impressive article in NYT. Conclusion:
[Oil] permeates and undermines the ecosystem in much the same way that big corporations have permeated and undermined our political system, with similarly devastating results.”
LINK.
Tech note:
Our MOABs and similar weapons are thermobaric devices… that means they use oxygen from the surrounding air to increase the size and duration of the blast wave. The intent is to kill people and damage conventional structures.
Needless to say… none of that applies on the ocean floor.
Could we deploy sufficient conventional explosives instead to do the trick?
Certainly.
Could we do it without making things worse than they are now?
Unknown.
The BP/GOM crisis is a CONTROL-FAILURE.
Do not entrust a WMD solution to the very persons liable for the problem…any of them.
Kill the well with a known solution [relief wells]. If in doubt about drilling only 2, start now with 2 more. Accept the known risk of 3 months more waiting.
The worst seems to be 3 months at 30-70k bbl/day.
Toolpushers have lots of experience hitting a known target miles distant vertically into formation and then horizontally. That part is well known. The Prez can get advice from best sources and likely have 90% confidence with 3 or 4 attempts…then be a leader.
So start 2 more relief wells now, and happy if do not need them. It will be a cheap lesson for future ops.
I believe that they have two started – one is already well down into the seafloor. It’s a matter of actually hitting the one that’s gushing ….
It seems to me as if the only solutions BP is considering are ones in which they both seal the leak and capture the oil. I do not know if bombing the well and/or crushing the pipe could work, but I would like to think that BP is at least considering solutions which do not involve oil capture. This would only increase their options. But the fact that they are focused on oil capture shows why BP being in charge of the clean up is a conflict of interest.
I think our current dilemma proves that when it comes to movie-plot doomsday scenarios, the government, much less BP, has no idea what to do. This goes for “24” type terrorist junk. Look what happens when they are faced with those things? Jack shit.
The idea is to create an over-pressure pattern strong enough the crush in the neck of the well.
The well goes down another 13,000 feet besides and is lined with some strong stuff given the internal pressures of the well.
The water pressure is already at a ton per square inch so to deform the ground sufficiently to crush the well pipe and seal the neck of the well for a good part of the distance down, it’s unimaginable… maybe a thousand tons psi who knows.
So at 50psi/kiloton and we need 2 million psi that’s what… 400,000 Kt. or 400 Mt. The Tsar design was good for 100Mt so we’d need four.
That’s right, just call the Ruskies and have them FedExover four Tsar Bombas to the spill site. Don’t forget that they have to be located under the surface to capture the energy and radiation as much as possible so there’s a bit more drilling before boom time.
Now, if that doesn’t take the top off the continental shelf thereby releasing gigatons of radioactive methane and many million barrels of oil, we’ll all be fine.
Well, except maybe for the earthquake that results from the blast…
And the tsunami that inundates south-costal US, Mexico, Cuba, all the islands of the Carribean, all the nations of Central America, and all the nations on the north coast of South America.
Other than that, I see no problems at all.
Problem is that the first few hundred feet below the water are nice soft mud. I understand that it’s about like chocolate pudding.
What’s all this doom and gloom? It’s fun to make things go boom! The last time we did a one off first time experimental nuke explosion in the middle of the ocean, we ended up with the bikini. Man has benefitted from the bikini ever since. See, there are always benefits……
Bikinis and dramatic footage…
Good to see you again.
Indeed, it seems that an intact rock layer is what is keeping petrochemicals contained underground. Poke a hole through that and oil (lighter than water) rises to the surface, unlike on land, where oil is heavier than air. I would imagine fragging the containment dome, as it were, would just let the whole oil field gush to the surface all at once. Have i misunderstood anything important here? Missed any mitigating factors?
Artists conception of controlled impingement.
At first glance, that looks like one of those Chinese finger trap thingies.
Ooh ooh, a non explosive procedure to neck down the well pipe — Stretch it closed! Just got to get the pipe hot enough to draw out…
Thatsa some Chinese finger trap thingie!
Don’t we wish it was that easy?
I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, and hope you didn’t interpret my silliness in that way. I’m just weary from all of this and haven’t the foggiest about a “controlled impingement”, though it does sound and look most impressive.
40 Megatons that is… Better check the math because I’m an order of magnitude off in the calculation.
But the real answer depends on the pressure needed to crush the well passage. We’re not manufacturing diamonds (500M lbs psi) here. But the minimum overpressure has to be calculated accurately in any case.
Bury five old B-53’s a mile under the seafloor and maybe we’ll get lucky. Or not.
Phrase to prompt awakening from a nightmare:
“… and propogating radially from the point of origin until stopped by a solid object.”
If the military does it, with nukes or conventionals, they gotta draw up a proposal for contract and afterwards send BP the bill.
I mean, it’s time we started running private enterprise like a business.
Frak – evryone’s asleep and I have a few minutes to read while working on a nice chianti and what do I find, you folks want to set off nuclear devices in the Gulf. Make sure you let me know what time. I’ll get my crab traps out and may be able to catch dinner flying through the air.
Anectodal – seafood prices are rising. I had to pay $7 a pound down on the wharf for snapper yesterday. Usually runs about $4.50. 10/15 shrimp are running about $8 with heads on. Usually about $5. The fish mongers seem to think everyone is beginning to do a little hoarding and that’s causing the uptick in prices.
I’d feel a lot better about all this if these guys were running things instead of Obama. I think we’re being sold out to the almighty dollar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGdwQf2a0W0
Arrrrr. If teh Pirate is up, I am up. Sorry about the nuking idea but, you know, what could go wrong??
Am watching an Australian Rules Football match on ESPN2. Totally crazy, but I love those wacky referees they have.
Australian rules? Someone is really bored in the offseason.
I don’t know, a nuke might work if it gets the price of seafood down. DO you know how many shrimp my dog can eat? I tried to cut her back a little the last couple Friday nights and she wasn’t happy at all.
Yes, I was pretty bored at the time; but I have always been highly amused by the refs and their wild hand gestures…..
Re food prices, who would want to be on the top of the food chain with all those nasty chemicals in the water there from here on out?
Our sources of food just got smaller.
What I want to know is why the Obama administration keeps saying that BP has all the expertise, and we just hem and haw around the edges? I’ll bet the folks over at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute have more relevant expertise than anyone at BP.
I know that tongue is in cheek, but I’d hate to think of what the shock wave from the contemplated explosion would do to all animal creatures of every kind in the Gulf of Mexico. The thing I like least about the idea is that Bombing Things is too close to the easy off-the-shelf ideas that too many people gravitate to, whether or not it makes sense. Please don’t encourage them!
Bob in AZ
In comments on my Seminal diary, alanhawaii found what seems to be legal authority for Obama to do whatever he thinks is necessary to stop the flow. Would that include a bomb?
er, fewer.
Kill the well before the well kills us.
We have a law to seize and freeze the assets of terrorists attacking the US. By not following lease agreements BP is the definition of a terrorist organization. When will the Genius get out in FRONT of the situation?
Seizing the the assets would not be a bipartisan solution.
Is that Mr. Bipartisan sitting on the bomb? Looks like a black Howdy Dowdy.
The problem with that idea is that a “bunker buster’s” claim to fame is it’s penetrating power, not it’s explosive capability. Bunker busters are full of conventional high explosive and penetrating earth before that explosive goes off is what they are designed to do. As for the “poor man’s nuke” aka a fuel air bomb: That provides a whole lot of concussion and flame but requires air to work.
I’m not for using nukes except as a last resort and if they must be used, I’m hoping that there is a (relatively) small scale thermonuclear device available that can provide the punch needed but not be as dirty as a fission weapon. I know absolutely nothing about our inventory or what’s available though. Zip. Zero. Nada.
All thermonuclear weapons are fission based – hydrogen bombs use a fission core to initiate the fusion reaction. Now the fission bombs/cores can be designed to emit more or less radiation depending on what’s needed of them. For example, the neutron bomb which was designed to emit mostly radiation and leave buildings intact.
I’m aware of all of that. However, the fusion device can be COMPARATIVELY cleaner than a fission bomb of the same yield.
BP has now spent a month trying to “salvage” the well instead of stopping the leak. There is serious talk of burning the coast marshes to try and cleanse them of oil, letting them rebuild over decades. And now growing consideration of nuking the ocean floor in hopes it’ll stop the pressurized stream of oil and gas?
Obama has ceded all efforts to a corporation motivated by profits and public relations. If this petro volcano is stopped within a year I’ll be amazed. I’m coming to the grim realization that the Gulf Coast may be dead for generations. Perhaps the Gulf itself.
I think a lot of people are coming to the same conclusion as you – they were more worried about saving the well than anything else.
Obama blew this big time.
And of course there always the problem of BP. they would never give Orahma permission to nuke their well and Orahma would never do anything against their wishes.
My primary concern with using ANY explosive is that the rock cap on this oilfield is reputedly sedimentary rock, not igneous rock, so any explosion sufficient to close the well is also sufficient to potentially fracture the cap.
It seems sorta like stopping a boat from sinking by drilling extra holes to let the water out.
Yep but on the other hand, oil isn’t usually found under igneous rock, though that is probably the case in Russia due to the Siberian Traps post dating the Carboniferous by about 200 million years. Very good point. I doubt that the person who wrote that opinion took that little fact into account….
Yes, actually the person did and is, rather, wondering if the folks so concerned about this “dome” realize that it is over two miles thick and that the hole shaft going down through it that needs to be sealed is only 28 inches or so, down to about 10 inches at the bottom, wide. The fretting about some fragile “containment dome” is misplaced fear. Now that doesn’t make bombing the sucker a good idea overall; there are a lot of factors that may well make it a bad idea, but that is not one of them. The point of this article is that I would like to see the discussion had.
I agree with the idea that the knowledgeable people need to look carefully at the idea of blowing it up. It may not have to be a nuclear bomb either. I understand they have often set explosives off to seal a well. I don’t know how much pressure it takes and what size charge, etc etc but someone should be taking a clear look at it. And I doubt, but can’t prove, that the world as we know it will come to an end from an explosion. I also understand that oil is 18000 feet below the sea floor. That is a lot of room to work with – – over 3 miles. One question about all this is: how long do we let the damn thing spill oil all over the place before we put some adult supervision in place? Screw the precious well. $70 million, nah we will take billions from you sucker.
Yeah, that is just about exactly what I am saying.
!@#$%^&*()
They can’t do it that way.
What explosives are used for is snuffing the flame on well fires, not closing off gushers, which is what this is (it is so NOT a ‘spill’).
And it’s not reasonable at a mile under water on a seafloor that’s more pudding than rock.
Maybe; maybe not. I don’t think that it has been established that a controlled implosion of the shaft is not feasible. Not in the least; what you say may possibly be the case, but it is entirely speculative and conclusory at this point.
and Rayne @ 62, et al. Being very ignorant of these matters, I’d appreciate knowing what impact these various approaches might have on all the unexploded ordnance in the Gulf of Mexico. LINK.
I don’t profess expertise, just have read some people who do claim knowledge of the area. Most of what I’ve read suggests that unexploded ordinance in the Gulf wouldn’t be a significant problem in that area (unless it happens to be both water-proof and shock sensitive). The real issue that I see is the methane hydrate, which is both unstable and explosive so any detonation in the area could have much larger impact than intended.
That is, the explosion of ordinance (shape-charges or otherwise) could trigger the phase change from methane hydrate to explosive methane and cause a massive explosion beyond the size intended and fracture the sedimentary rock cap (creating either a really big nasty leaky hole or even just lots of other leaks through cracks in the rock cap).
Again, I am not professing expertise, only repeating thoughts expressed by oil field engineers and others claiming such knowledge on other blogs and news pages.
At a minimum, an explosion in the sea floor would release a substantive quantity of methane gas. It could hover and remain suspended as a plume of hydrates, but we don’t know how much or how long; at some point, the methane will destabilize from hydrate crystals to gas. That’s a lot of hydrocarbons being freed into the atmosphere; may not have an immediate impact, but any hydrocarbons in the atmosphere are to be avoided.
At a maximum, an explosion would destabilize a lot of hydrates, including those in salt formations around the well site, and they both emerge immediately as gas and their exit causes the sea floor to collapse rapidly, cascading into destabilization of other areas at higher elevation, causing slumps of bottom material along slopes and releasing even more methane — this time as gas.
I just can’t think of an innocuous version of these events.
Ah, here was one of the bits I ran across at DOE’s site on hydrates:
How reassuring — and how nice to know that these assholes at BP knew this crap as does the entire oil industry.
Thanks ever so much, Mithras61, for helping me better understand this. Much appreciated.
One hopes the serious “discussion” will include some consideration of what might go wrong. Unthinkable and impossible as such a thing might be.
Further questions.
Who, specifically, are you going to trust?
To “do” this thing, I mean?
Does the rest of the world have any “interest” in what “we” decide to do?
Suppose this were some other country whose continental oceanic shelf were spewing oil. What would we think? Suppose it was Iran?
DW
Actually, yes. Is anyone there beginning to talk about the possibility that the “spill” is going to reach the Gulf Stream?
Hello, skdadl.
There is a great deal of “background” noise down here and the static is pretty bad, but I believe you asked if there is any talk beginning to be heard about concerns that the oil might reach the “Gulf Stream”?
The short answer is “no”, but there is considerable question about who put the Gulf Stream in such an inconvenient place to start with.
There are rumors about criminal charges, but apparently, the applicable statutes ran out when the oil reached their ankles.
Currently, skdadl, beyond the discovery that our politicians all have feet of clay, minds of mush, and wallets of gold, most Americans, who are not too big to fail, have their hands full with what is in front of their noses and have no time for any such “supposes”.
DW
You know what happens if there’s enough of it and it gets to the Gulf Stream. That’s the entire east-coast fishery (not to mention the beaches) in your country and mine. And then the west coasts of Ireland and G. Britain, hello. The Gulf Stream is Ireland’s and Britain’s lifeline. Without it they would be much colder for one thing — see map.
Mind you, the Atlantic Ocean is a very big ocean. I don’t know enough about these things to know whether the Atlantic can bury oil the way it does ships and people.
It is reassuring, is it not, that those who claim to know everything, do not.
Now I ask ya, what is more important.
Dealing with an unfolding environmental catastrophe which could become an international disaster?
Or Keeping Up the Pretense?
(Bomb, baby bomb! Before things get worse …)
That our two “biggest problems”, a “little” leak and Iran, can both be “solved” the same way, is something other than reassuring … but I just can’t put my finger on it.
DW
Just trying to think outside the box a little: Suppose the government suggests this course of action, tries it, and it either doesn’t help or makes the situation even worse. Is BP now off the hook for damages? Is there a plan C for dealing with the “even worse” scenario? Not that I have a better idea. Just askin’
Another excellent point, though I believe BP has never been on the hook for damages. Unless of course Orahma is still engaged in his never ending and ever growing game of multidimensional chess. I’m sure that the dimensions are now increasing exponentially.
Actually I think we’d have to go from multidimensional chess to multiverse chess to come up with a rationalization.
They are. Congress passed a law in the wake of the Exxon Valdez that made any company responsible for a disaster, financially responsible for mitigating it. The idea was, in effect, to prevent a government “bailout”.
Bob in AZ
Capped at 75 million. Their lawyers are already looking for a way around that. 75 million is nothing.
No, the 75 million cap is on putative economic losses, not in cleanup and mitigation expenses.
That’s Krugman. I hope you’re right and he’s wrong, bmaz.
Oh, I am pretty sure Krugman is wrong on this. The 75 million cap is on economic loss damages per the Oil Pollution Act of 1990; cleanup damages theoretically is all on BP in an unlimited amount, at least to the extent they are legally responsible for the contamination. Now they may well at some point try to shift liability to Transocean, Halliburton etc. Time will tell.
“Weapons labs in the former Soviet Union developed special nukes for use to help pinch off the gas wells”
I’m highly wary of this approach, but at least the Russian government has a “Yes We Can” approach to dealing with disasters while we’ve got Obama saying that his administration doesn’t have the equipment, wont ask to borrow equipment from the countries that do and instead outsources it all to the company that caused the disaster in the first place.
One thing that wont stop the oil volcano, but could result in criminal prosecution would be to go after BP for securities fraud for low-balling the size of the leakage. Of course the Obama administration has done what they could to muddy the waters to cover BP from additional criminal/civil liability, but I think this has to be looked at from multiple angles aside from just environmental law.
What’s in Obama’s bomb?
Tax breaks for Big Oil and exemptions from having to file environmental impact reports for more GOM drilling?
Had an instructor a long time ago that maintained that the proper application of high explosives was a solution to any problem – if you didn’t think so, you just weren’t applying them properly.
But in this scenario? No. Just… no.
I suspect that the Russians weren’t dealing with deepwater wells, but with wells on land, where it’s a lot easier to work. (Also they seem to be less interested in future environmental effects – or were less interested, before Chernobyl.)
Truth or tease?
Gibbs opens door to criminal probe in Gulf of Mexico oil spill
LINK.
Nuke the well.
Why can’t BP put a valve on top of the BOP? If the area around the BOP is concrete (per Haliburton), you could build a valve bigger than the diameter of the BOP. With the valve open, lower the valve onto the BOP. Secure the valve to the concrete pad and/or BOP AND then shut the valve. In power plants I have seen valves that were larger than 10 ft in diameter. I have heard oil refineries patching leaks in lines (without shutting down the process) by doing a similar method. My guess is that BP has already thought of these options and is not intent on moving forward due to the potential of losing their potentially very profitable well.
That’s essentially what “top hat” and the other domes were supposed to do. The problem is that the hydrates accumulate in ice form behind the valve, and they didn’t know how to handle that.
Bob in AZ
put a friggen SLEEVE on the fricken pipe
thats what the US NAVY does with leaky pipes
get one of those robot sub thingys, and build a “Sleeve” in two parts
assemble the sleeve over the break
problem solved
am I an idiot ???
why ain’t anybody talking about something like that
Then how did they get the original BOP on the ocean floor?
As I understand it – and I’m learning a lot from reading the threads at the Oil Drum – the problem is that the BOP on the seafloor is partially activated, and the pipe above it – the riser – has folded over so it’s nearly bent double right on top of the BOP. That’s why they’re trying other stuff – if they could get the BOP to shut off properly, or if they had better access to the pipe on either sided of it, it would be a lot easier to stop the flow.
Crimp and cut. Crimp the existing pipe close to the BOP, and cut the line after the crimp.
It’s already crimped. And leaking at the crimp.
This is EXACTLY the answer. I’ve been saying it for weeks. BP’s only interest in this is to SAVE THE WELL.
And to the naysayers above predicting doom from any underwater explosion – you don’t have direct knowledge of these techniques. You CAN do a controlled detonation at the proper underground depth, and the driller has the Geo reports to tell you that depth. And we happen to have a government group with extremely good skills at controlled deepsea explosions: The SEALS. To hypothesize that any explosion would release huge amounts of methane is pure nonsense.
As my 16-year-old daughter said, “If there’s experts, where are they? Show me one.”
We’re waiting. Where’s the fucking experts on deepwater explosives? Huh?
Experts?
Here is but one of many – and very near that drillsite:
http://www.petroexplo.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=27
Well, where are the experts to back up your cascading cataclysmic doom scenario? Have not seen those either. Neither position should be pushed like it is gospel; there should be a better airing of all thoughts, but we are not getting that from the government and BP. That is the point.
How does what we don’t know, stack up against what we do know?
Our knowledge compares to a mud-puddle.
Our ignorance compares to the ocean.
Or maybe, we are smarter than we think we are?
Does there come a point, ever, when it is better to err on the side of caution?
DW
There’s actually a crapload of data and experts on hydrates across the gulf.
ScienceDirect.com pulls up 966 related articles about methane hydrates near or in the Continental Shelf along the Gulf of Mexico. The government itself has piles and piles of research in USGS, DOE and DOI sites.
If I were tasked with finding an expert, I’d go to Roger Sassen of Texas A&M, who was a key contributor to the following paper:
He’s already suggested building a plant next to the leaking well to siphon off the hydrates for use as another fuel, freeing up the oil to be harvested.
I saw your bet, now match it and pony up your underwater bombing expert.
None of those methane experts appear to be saying that there will be a cataclysmic chain reaction; that was the issue. The fact that methane hydrates exist is not particularly challenged or controversial; simply because they do does not support the doom you predict.
Tell you what. I’ll send an email to Roger Sassen and ask him what he thinks of bombing the well.
Now find your expert.
Knock yourself out. Maybe you should also ask him what a few years of unmitigated oil gushing out the damn thing will do too. But, you know, the purpose of this post was to start a discussion and have a little fun. I did not ever say I had all the science or that is was necessarily the way to go; just that it was an idea that ought to be explored. And it presents some opportunities for a little humor. By the way, the Russians and Chris Brownfield would seem to have a little knowledge, did you forget them totally?
Russians do not have any expertise bombing under the sea floor and you know it.
And Brownfield, who actually admits to a “gut instinct” to bomb the well? Gimme a break. He’s a policy wonk. Let’s see the science, or are you adverse to science like Republicans and Obama’s White House?
Lighten up? Hell, we’re done here until I get in touch with Sassen. No sense flogging your dead horse.
All I am saying is it is worthy of discussion and, perhaps, a little fun. You want to shut off both and now have proceeded to whip out the tired canard that I am the equivalent of a science adverse Republican. Somehow, that just doesn’t seem like the proper way to go.
Kill It NOW
Did the ” Genius” Shut down ALL BP operations in our waters until BP can prove, by stopping this oil blow out, they have the know how and functioning equipment to cap gushers a mile down. If it’s three, four or twelve months, so be it. SHUT them down then watch how fast it can be done.
And oh yes, that nuclear bomb suggestion is really wack. The kinds of explosives you’d need are FAR smaller than nuclear. Think Red Adair… There’s “Thermonuclear” and there’s also “thermodynamic” – and it’s the latter you would use to seal that well. Get a couple of Explosives Engineers (yes, there is such a specialty) in front of those geological maps, and they can tell you PRECISELY how much bomb you need and how deep to insert it.
All Obama needs is the balls to Nationalize that drillsite.
Right. On.
In the unlikely case nobody’s coined it yet: Oilgarchy.
The point is, there is No Shortage of Expertise! What we have, is a Lack of Will.
From the PetroExplo list of products – let’s go shopping, shall we?
Welcome to the Petro-Explo Products page
Oil Field Detonators
– DFC-10 A resistorized and fluid desensitized electric detonator (MSDS)
– RJ-215-IV – An RDX, non-resistorized electric detonator (MSDS)
– RJ-215-V – An RDX, resistorized electric detonator (MSDS)
Electric Detonators
– EBW, exploding bridge-wire electric detonator (MSDS)
– Mantelec 1.83m No. 6 strength electric detonator (MSDS)
– Mantelec 5m, No. 8 strength electric detonator (MSDS)
Non-Electric Detonators
– Mantespo No. 8 non-electric fuse detonator (MSDS)
– MC-78, booster
– Cobra Safety Fuse Assemblies, complete fuse assemblies of various lengths
— 1 meter length (MSDS)
— 2 meter length (MSDS)
— 4 meter length (MSDS)
— 1 meter length with igniter fuse connector (MSDS)
— 2 meter length with igniter fuse connector (MSDS)
— 3 meter length with igniter fuse connector (MSDS)
— 4 meter length with igniter fuse connector (MSDS)
Safety Fuse/Igniter Fuse
– Cobra Fuse, safety fuse made to US Military specifications (MSDS)
– Mantitor, igni tor fuse (MSDS)
High Explosives
– RDX, main (MSDS)
– RDX, primer, Class 1, Class 3, Class 5, Class 7
– HMX, main (MSDS)
– HMX, primer (MSDS)
– NONA (MSDS)
Inert Training Explosives (Coming Soon)
– Inert Electric Detonators
– Inert DFC-10
– Inert Safety Fuse
– Inert Safety Fuse Assemblies
– Inert Detonating Cord
– Inert C-4
– Inert Dynamite
Explosive Accessories
– EBW Blasting Machines
– Bench Crimpers
– Aluminum Shells
– Aluminum Crimp Sleeves
So then, Auduboner, if I understand you aright, nothing can go terribly wrong?
We cannot, conceivably, make things worse?
We have reached the place, after a series of “bad” decisions, where we cannot do anything else wrong?
I wonder if this is the first time people have ever thought such a thing?
Clearly, it is a lack of something we are dealing with. If not “will”, then
what could we imagine it might be?
DW
all of which are intended for use underground, as in drill a hole first. I suspect those are mostly for seismic testing – faults and oil fields go together in a lot of places, not including the GoM.
Shutting off gushers, especially deep-water gushers – not so much.
Analyzing the actual behavior and adopting the ‘who benefits’ perspective, I’m starting to think maybe the goal is to scorch the earth and sea in the GoM with oil and toxic dispersants as badly as possible for as long as possible, in order to remove for the foreseeable future all possible obstacles and arguments against massively increased deep-sea exploitation in the GoM. Petro-exploitation can’t be any danger to wildlife if there isn’t any wildlife.
Did anyone see Salazar on CNN, speaking from BP headquarters, I believe?
It was disgusting; a total farce of self congratulation and apologia. Made me want to explode. They truly have nothing. The Gulf of Mexico is so truly fucked.
Thanks for responding, bmaz. It was, then, as bad as I figured it would be. “They truly have nothing.” God, this hurts!
Yes, “They truly have nothing.”
Except most of the money, and the entirety of the “law” behind (and in front of) “them”… “they” being ALL of those “too big to fail, too big to nail, and too big to go to jail”.
The ruling MONEY classes, including the political class (which includes the media) are facing no consequence, but the rest of us and the planet, itself, certainly are.
The only worry those on “top” have regards the PR “angle” of this untimely “glitch” and its attendant “unpleasantness”.
DW
Which is scarier, DWBartoo: That they are clueless or that they are feigning cluelessness?
PS “They truly have nothing” is a bmaz quote, and I should have made the attribution. Sorry.
It is nothing but scary, fatster.
Not only are they “playing” at being clueless, in their oh so clever way, but they are also, truly, clueless.
As bmaz says, paraphrasing, here, … we may not like it (we may even hate it), but that ‘s the way it is.
Fortunately, he has not intoned, “It is ever thus.”
So, I remain, in some small ways, hopeful (but determined), however silly that might seem.
DW
We are becoming a Country of weenies.
This oil spill and the problem with the well, that can’t seem to be fixed proves it.
We put all our faith in smart people and get fucked everytime.
The greatest Country in the world we call ourselves, but can’t fix any of our problems.
The well is just an echo of all our past problems. We couldn’t rebuild the World Trade Center. We can’t win little Wars. Can’t scare little Countries like Iran and Noth Korea. Can’t keep our manufacturing. We can’t keep our economy strong. We can’t get our Government to work. We can’t pay for what we spend. We can’t sustain ourselves.
With all these problems we are told we have the smartest people in the world working on them. It hides the fact we have a kindergarten class in charge and 1st graders advising them.
irememeber54 wrote:
We are becoming a Country of weenies.
This oil spill and the problem with the well, that can’t seem to be fixed proves it.
We put all our faith in smart people and get fucked everytime.
The greatest Country in the world we call ourselves, but can’t fix any of our problems.
The well is just an echo of all our past problems. We couldn’t rebuild the World Trade Center. We can’t win little Wars. Can’t scare little Countries like Iran and Noth Korea. Can’t keep our manufacturing. We can’t keep our economy strong. We can’t get our Government to work. We can’t pay for what we spend. We can’t sustain ourselves.
With all these problems we are told we have the smartest people in the world working on them. It hides the fact we have a kindergarten class in charge and 1st graders advising them
BRAVO – FRAKKING BRAVO
One question about explosives underwater. Can we know the size and effect of the shockwave? How much sea life will this kill?
A modest proposal: Since the right is sure the democrats want to set up some kind of “workers paradise” the administration should trump their wildest most irrational fears. Confiscate and demolish all suv’s that average below say, 28mpg. Smash them, and dump them in the gulf on top of the leak, the pressure one mile down should press them together nicely,stopping or greatly slowing the leak. Their absence from the roads will provide a nice carbon offset and
show the nutters we aren’t fooling. (just sayin’)
I like the idea mentioned by a commenter above, of a conventional multiple relief well projects approach.
Benefactor Dr. Sludge, above, could examine an AZ crater called Barringer as a prototype of the undersea explosion concept, the AZ site having been a meteorite in origin. There is a folktale mythology about the Chicxulub asteroid impact, as well as recent [merely 3-]dimensional imaging of the seafloor at its location within the Gulf of Mexico several hundred miles southeast of the DeepwaterHorizon blowout site; the Chicxulub event was associated with atmosphere pollution afterwash which created the so-called cretaceous-tertiary boundary, i.e., the event which extinguished the dinosaur biological order.
re: the mentions of the Palomares incident; there was a guest expert on radio ~1 month ago who has published a book on similar mishaps. One was a pilot jetisoning a nuke bomb somewhere off (Iceland), another in nearshore waters off GA. He reported about 40 such mostly unreported by MSMedia incidents by the US, and scads more by the efficient Ruskies.
An article in today*s paper describes a particular variety of cane growing along the US gulfcoast; the cane is susceptible to eradication by oilspills; the cane supports a community of plants which together help serve as a barrier against hurricane event transitorily raised sealevels-tides. Hurricane season begins in a few months, about the time BP et al could complete a bevy of relief wells, but before vegetation restoration could become effective. I guess I am against trying to get an asteroid to create a miniChicxulub. I*ve got to re-look at the primary ballot in the state where I live, to see if there is someone I can vote for to solve the problem with delays in capping the wildcat well in the GoM.
so the answer is an idea from the Wile E. Coyote Acme School of BP Stupidology
might as well slap an “ACME Supply” label on the side of the thing and hire a coyote to jump up and down on it
See? I knew if we put our heads together we could get a concussion!
from what I’ve seen, we’re talking about a pipe running horizontal to the ocean floor, right ???
watch the movie “Down Periscope”
that’s where I got the idea
sure, it’s a little harder a mile under the ocean, but it’s doable
OT — well, sorta, since it’s also about the global petrocracy — That was quite the story fatster found about a whole buncha people in Saudi Arabia and Iraq being involved in spilling evidence of the Saudis supporting AQI operations. FIngers point to Bandar in a major and evidence-supported kinda way (if it holds up). Something significant looks to be up there, power-shift-wise. And PapaDick was just there IIRC.
Yup. Deadeye was there and went directly in to see the King.
One can’t help but wonder what the relative timing of the info-leak and the visit was. Did PapaDick tell Aziz to decapitate his renegade spooks? (“Some 37 members of Saudi’s intelligence service, accused of being behind the leakage of the confidential document, were also reported to have been arrested.”) Mainly interesting is the absence (so far) of any attempt to deny the underlying AQI support. Reopens some old stories and associations that are not helpful for, well, many of the powerful.
Lot of info here. Very rich source of information: Center for Biological Diversity. If the O-Administration were paying half as much attention as this, then we might have some sense of something being done to actually, you know, grapple with the situation. What is going on in the WH and Congress? Have they all taken up knitting or something nice and sedentary like that?
they’re all trying to figure out how this is going to impact the next election, and the lobbyists’ payments to them. /s
Here’s BP’s “Plan” for those oil wells. Be sure to look at all the discussion about “spills” and how everything would go if such occurs. Also note this is the “Public” information plan. Sure would like to see the one that was “private”.
Great quotes from today’s Miami Herald (apologies if already linked):
“They have the eyes and ears that are down there. They are necessarily the modality by which this is going to get solved,” [Adm. Thad] Allen [Commandant of the Coast Guard] said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “Our responsibility is to conduct proper oversight to make sure they do that.”
“I don’t think anybody could credibly say, even as frustrated as they are and as frustrated as we are, that the government has stood around, done nothing, and hoped for the best,” Gibbs said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“I’ve used the analogy that it is a little bit like popping a soda can rushing out with lots of gas and oil. There’s lots of gas in this crude,” [BP’s Managing Director Bob] Dudley said. “The rate is unclear.
“Let us drill [in the Arctic Natinoal Wildlife Refuge in Alaska] where it is even safer than way offshore,” [Sarah Palin] told “Fox News Sunday.”
LINK.
Yeah, I feel lots better now, too.
Twolf came up with quite the picture, didn’t he? But there’s so much more to be extracted from that film, as it applies to BP, Transocean, Halliburton, MMS, EPA, etc.
Let’s go to the script, shall we? From IMDB we see the WH reaction to the “precious bodily fluids” remark of the General that launched his bombers against Russia:
That last exchange is something else, when you think about this mess in the Gulf. Stanley Kubrick was clearly ahead of his time.
Bucky Baby is our poster boy all right.
In all too many cases, in all areas of human endeavor, dynamic professionalism is naught but a thin facade that lasts only as long as conditions remain lucky. The materialization of any actual serious problems all too often quickly reveals what you’ve been living with, all along, has actually been just a charade, all along. It’s the way of careers and organizations, failing upwards. That’s why for essential organizations and essential functions there has to be eternal vigilance — rigor, testing, exercises, etc. — to ensure there is actual competence and ability in place. That essential systemic rigor is what has failed — over and over and over again.
AND WE HAVE A WINNER!!!
Logging in at comment number 144 is Peterr with the first comment on this post to realize the whole thing is based on Dr. Strangelove and to see the humor and parallel of stupidity between the film and actions of the public/private trust here in Deepwater Horizon.
Well done!
Now perhaps we should discuss BP’s precious blobbity fluids!
Everyone thought Kubrick was talking about the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction, but you clearly noticed the subtle satirical thrust that Kubrick made about deep sea oil drilling.
Wouldn’t want to condemn a whole project just because of one little glitch that no one could have anticipated . . .
You mean like this?
As paraphrased by Major King Kong.
“Well done!
Now perhaps we should discuss BP’s precious blobbity fluids.”
Precisely.
BP’s incentive structure is clearly not to close this well at all cost, especially not in a destructive manner.
The question is, what is Obama’s incentive? To be the first president of the US to nuke – “bomb out” – part of the mainland in a desparate attempt to “bail out” a big oil corporation?
I’m with you — new ways to look at a problem can actually lead to progress. It’s interesting to investigate a totally different approach.
Stretching the pipe shut — easy it’s not. Steel isn’t ductile and that doesn’t account for welds. Getting a section of pipe up to oh, 1250 degrees C isn’t safe either — think superheated everything. Just getting the current to couple into the melting metal pipe is unbelievable.
Even placing a reactor core to generate the heat down there is scary.
But I’d much rather look at a controlled nuclear reaction than an uncontrolled one.
And remember, it’s 5000 feet below sealevel, very cold, and very dark. And you have to do everything by remote control.
Sure, I can ask, but as far as I know his background is in geology, not oceanography or biology.
That’s kind of like expecting a lawyer to know in any detail something about detonating a bomb under the sea floor.
Oh, and let me point out that the bulk of the reports I’ve seen out of the 966 at ScienceDirect indicate the GOM is loaded with porous pockets of hydrates along with seeps of methane gas. That’s a lot more data than you’ve produced so far.
Saying the damn things are there means squat. Really, I have no need to make this a war; you have no more inherent expertise than I do in all this. All I am saying is it should be discussed; you seem to think any discussion of the thought should be shut down per se. And you have no substantive basis for that other than rote fear. Maybe we could both just lighten up a bit, eh?
What most of the discussion so far has missed is that there’s not just one leak; there’s *three*! Some of the underwater shots show this, but most of them focus in on just one pipe. In the images I am remembering, it looks like the leaks are a few feet apart. I tried to find an image showing this, but couldn’t find the image I saw.
Bob in AZ
I’m seeing reports that there may be a fourth one starting, probably fron wear by the sand particles flying through the pipe.
There may have been a big change in the gusher. The Gulf of Mexico may be totally fucked if this is correct. Speculative so far, but……..
Major Change Down Below… Live Blogging…
‘Top kill’ to stop Gulf of Mexico oil spill may be delayed; Coast Guard admiral expects ‘constant activity’ by BP
Rear Admiral Mary Landry sounds like she knows what she’s doing and she won’t accept nonsense nor abide slackers.
“Landry, who spoke with members of the media after an aerial survey of the oil slick, said she had to pressure BP to use equipment and boats that had been pre-staged in areas near the western edge of the oil slick. Some of that equipment went unused, in part because workers had been taking breaks because of the heat, she said.
“BP was told to hire additional work crews to ensure equipment was not sitting idle, she said.
‘”Our frustration with BP is there should be no delays at all,” Landry said.”
And I was heartened also by her comment that there’s “really no excuse for not having constant activity.”
Maybe she’ll disappoint, too, but right now she sounds like the man for the job!
Many thanks for this. I don’t feel quite so desparing now.
Thank you, bmaz, for that link.
Jefferson Parish gets a big thumbs up!
And so, bmaz, do you, excellent post. Ya got brain cells functioning all over the place.
Like I said, you is just plain wicked, heh, heh, heh.
DW
Where is BP headquarters? Time for a Million American Vigil there.
Houston. Where else would oil kings live?
Thanks. Enduring the myriad awfulnesses of Houston is a sacrifice I think people would be willing to make.
Some of the locals seem to have had it:
J[efferson] P[arrish] officials commandeer BP’s hired boats in Grand Isle
LINK.
Go people!
Thanks, fatster, for that link.
I wonder if Obama will warn the parish “off”?
DW
“modest”
Blogger ‘monkeyfister‘ is reporting that there are blowouts occurring, something like gas exploding out of the well, enlarging the hole around the pipe, and that the flow rate is increasing.
BP is running out of time, even more than out of options.
Couple o’ stories over at Large Orange show hints that due to BP’s past history of serious wrongdoing, some in the USG are prepared to sever USG relations with BP generally via a mechanism called ‘debarment’. Sounds like that would void all their petro exploitation leases in one go. Evidently one factor cutting against that is that (and I didn’t know this) BP is a primary petroleum provider to DoD.
That’s all very interesting. Anyone here have any previous knowledge of debarment?
Also it would hit BP to the tune of $16Bn/yr.
Have to end the wars then, I guess. So sorry.
Yeah, this leak is minor and that’s why we’re going to defcon 3. Right. No problem–everything is well in hand.
Dick Garwin is on the job.
For those of you who don’t know him, Dick Garwin is, among physicists, sort of the “last of the Giants” of the early nuclear era. Obama tapped him to lead a commission on what to do about the well. At TPM this excited a lot of commnetary about a plan to use nukes, which I imagine is simply not going to happen.
Explosives engineering is not anything I know a lot about, but I’ll venture a couple of comments on very general grounds. First, if you can’t do it with one weapon, you can’t do it. While precision multi-explosive concussion can be acheived (it’s in fact required for a plutonium weapon), in such devices the concussion is travelling through engineered and understood media. Here the overpressure would be going through a natural rock formation of unknown materials, defects, and strata. Second, it seems broadly to me that a well-designed set of conventional explosives mounted on the pipe itself are likely preferable to a nuke. Third, there was a question about whether such a device could function at depth–it is very hard for me to imagine this is not a soluble problem. For instance, a containment sphere with optical signal feedthroughs.
But I think this is all really beside the point. Let us momentarily imagine (I believe likely counter to fact) that a nuclear blast were in fact a technically viable and efficient solution. Is there any chance–any at all–that it would be a politically viable solution?
Well, no, I do not think a nook would be viable politically. Quite frankly, not ecologically either; and if a bomb would work at all, you would think there would be a conventional firing solution (to borrow a phrase). The question is would/could it work in the first place. My guess is probably not, but I would like it seriously considered and gamed out, because I do not have faith in any of the “solutions” BP has advanced to date. I question their ability to even pull off the relief well solution at this point. And even if they are capable on the relief well solution, it will be sometime in August at best before there is any relief, which is an awful long period of unmitigated oil flow into the gulf; and “at best” does not include allowances for hurricane season and a whole host of other potential issues including the odds of actually hitting the target accurately with their drill.
Something has got to give.
I am not sure I follow your various statements. A nuclear warhead easily fits into a deep sea submersible maintaining surface pressure. It will detonate just fine. The whole idea of using a nuke instead of conventional explosives is that you can just place it in the general vincinity, cross your fingers for good luck and push the button. That is not engineering, that is an admission of defeat.
The real question is, just what does it take to collapse a well in this state of unfinished construction/disrepair? In other words: How many engineers does it take to close this well? How many politicians? How many voters? Because the one statement Brownstein made that rings very, very true is that BP’s incentive structure is clearly not to close this well at all cost.
Hmmm @ 174 asked,
“Where is BP headquarters? Time for a Million American Vigil there.”
Depends on how you define “headquarters.” As Rachel Maddow showed the other day, for tax purposes, their HQ is in Switzerland, where they have a few dozen staff. Of course, for operational purposes in the Gulf, as bmaz pointed out, their HQ is in Houston, where they have more than 1000 staff.
Bob in AZ
PJEvans @ 181,
Thanks for the link. This looks very bad. If the pipe leading TO the BOP breaks up, containment will be far more difficult.
For sure, all deep sea wells should be shut down until each one is fully inspected by an independent and competent authority, and brought up to code (and if there is no code, one is badly needed!) I think a “code” could easily be constructed from existing rules & regs, many of which have either been ignored, or blessed with an “if you say so” OK.
Bob in AZ
Here’s some great topical reading:
“In the Gulf, drillers and operators have previously avoided areas where hydrates are close to the surface. “There is a geohazard.”
http://scicom.ucsc.edu/SciNotes/0401/methane/
and
http://www.uoregon.edu/~emilie/OceanDynamicsProjects/9/341.html
Not an expert in oil work, but it seems that a bomb closing the shaft off would not affect the asset. A new path could be drilled to the asset. So, I don’t think that is stopping it.
There is a factor which is neglected often in these discussions. We have not had a leak, blowout at this depth.
Since we really don’t have the experience with the situation at this depth, it is possible a bomb, or other conventional idea would end up making the situation worse by unintended consequences.
Again, not an expert, it seems this situation, once you accept that the drilling was OK’d, is one where a combination of people not always doing their best, sometimes doing their best and just a damn difficult situation no matter who is doing what factors together.
Not having done it in the first place might be right. But, having gotten there now, I don’t think anyone is going to handle this perfectly. Obama, BP or anyone else.