My puzzlement about the Oil Gusher...

[seawasp]

( I say "gusher" because "leak" sounds so puny)

It would seem to me that there is a fairly simple (in the sense of "if I had many millions of dollars, desperation, and the resources to make it happen, this is a lot easier than a lot of other approaches) method to not stop, but nearly completely contain, this gusher.

Clearly the problem isn't getting some kind of pipe down to the area in question; they've done that multiple times. So let's envision getting a pipe very near to the wellhead. From the pipe, a short (relatively) section of flexible pipe, and at the end of that, a wide bell-shaped section of flexible material.

At the top of the pipe, a very powerful pump capable of pumping more volume per second than is emerging from the wellhead.

Start pump running and get bell-shaped section over the wellhead. Maneuver until reasonably centered and then let it drop.

Flexible section is suddenly drawn in to adhere to the wellhead and all surrounding material by the suction. The oil is drawn up the pipe, mixed with some amount of water that leaks in from the not-perfect seal.

Have on station two tankers or processing boats which can handle the volume such that when one is sitting there catching the 90% oil, the other is taking its full self to some location where it can be unloaded and processed, then come back in time to relieve the first one.

The flexible pipe and bell should be relatively cheap and easy to replace, so that if the combination of oil and seawater erode it, they can be replaced easily.

The basic principle should be clear for anyone who's used a vacuum cleaner and had it suddenly get stuck on a curtain. It's not particularly ELEGANT, it's a patch job, but it should WORK. You shouldn't have to be pumping against the pressure of the ocean -- you take the water off the top of the column, the volume is mostly replaced by the welling oil, etc., so you don't need some incredible super-pump that manages a hundred atmospheres of pressure or something.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Alas, the problem is a lot more difficult than that.

Firstly, the well head is under a lot of water -- enough that there's already well over a hunfred atmospheres of pressure down there.

Secondly, the volume of the gusher is collossal -- somewhere in the range 30,000 to 100,000 tons of oil per day. "Some location where it can be unloaded and processed" is a very tall order.

Thirdly, the real leak seems to be a long way under the surface; some reports suggest that the oil dome itself has fractured and is leaking around the drill string -- possibly some distance away from it. The leak is, in other words, not coming from the pipe alone but bleeding up through the seabed over a wide area.

Fourthly, the sea floor around the well head isn't solid rock -- it's sand and silt hundreds of metres deep. Start hoovering that crud up and you're simply going to suck away the mass that's stabilizing the upper couple of kilometres of grill string (which already has a 500 ton lump of hardware balancing on top of it).

Fifthly, what's leaking is not a mix of oil and seawater -- there's methane clathrates down there. Which are fizzy. Fizzy oil/water emulsion is not something I'd consider trivial to handle ...

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

Yeah. :(

As much as I like to indulge in backseat engineering, I have never been able to even imagine a simple solution. Not with a problem of that scale, in that location.

[aardy.livejournal.com]

Would it be feasible to pave a few hundred yards of the surrounding seabed with a couple feet of concrete, both to stabilize it for later capping activities and to cap any bleeds?

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Probably not, or we'd be hearing about it already.

(Also: postulate a radius of 100 metres, or about 110 yards. That's a surface area of roughly 31,000 square metres. "A couple feet" approximates to half a metre, so let's call it a volume of 16,000 cubic metres. At 5 tons/cubic metre, you're asking to position 60,000 tons of concrete onto the sea floor under 1900 metres of water -- a little shallower than the wreck of the Titanic, but not by much. And that's a minimal implementation of your proposed solution.

In engineering terms, this is a hard problem, even before we get onto little side-issues like stabilizing the raft so it doesn't succumb to subsidence and so on.

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

Remember the big containment dome? There was a problem, something about hydrate crystals... the thing is, I think the crystal were interfering with the pipe that led back to the surface... I don't CARE if we can't get the oil out after we cap, it, they should have just capped the damn thing!

But I'm not a petroleum engineer. I'm sure there are good engineering reasons why they haven't been able to stop the flow.

I hear there are some political reasons that may be affecting things; the Dutch supposedly have some super containment technology and floating processing capacity that one ship can outdo every ship at the site combined, and we know they're good with building dikes to protect the land.

Remember when the Kursk sank, and Russia was all "We got this." and Norway was like "Dude, let us help!" and when Russia finally gave in, Norway ad the hatch open in less than 12 hours? I feel like we're Russia in this case.

[kengr]

They can't cap it because the end of the pipe is jagged.

All the schemes so far were essentially "caps" with a pipe to let them bleed off the gushing oil. Since they can't get a seal tight enough to hold against the pressure of the oil leak, there has to be something to convey the leaking oil to the surface.

The hydrate bit is likely the methane gas forming methane clathrates with the water (the temp is low enough and the pressure high enough) when it gets confined inside the gizmo they put over the leak.

And since that's a solid or "slush" type thing, that blocks things up and the oil and gas goes elsewhere. :-(

[aardy.livejournal.com]

I'm no engineer, but from what I recall of the initial attempts at attaching a cap & pump pipe is that there are impurities in the oil that easily freeze/crystalize and completely clog the pipe, causing the oil pressure to blow the seal and put you back at square one. Would the extra pressure of having a tight seal and pumping movement like that be enough to prevent that?

[dalesql.livejournal.com]

The main problem is that the natural gas that is a large fraction of the total flow will under the pressures found down at 5000 feet of water, combine with the water to form those hydrates, which are solid enough to block up the pipe and pump.

The only real long term solution is to get down way below the seabed into solid rock and plug up the borehole with enough concrete. Or drill a whole lotta other wells and suck all that oil and gas out from that geological structure.
Not glamorous, not fast, and not cheap. And throwing money at the problem will not make it go any faster. You can only drill so fast with current technology.

The previous major (and this one still hasn't exceeded it in total volume of oil) oil spill in the gulf. Was in the 70s, only 300 feet of water, and ran unchecked into the ocean for several months before it was plugged by concrete injected into the borehole by a relief well.
By the way, when the state of texas tried to get compensation from PEMEX for cleaning up that spill in texas waters, PEMEX basically told them to fuck off. I wonder if BP will be allowed to tell mexico to fuck off when they try to get cleanup money.

[dragoness-e.livejournal.com]

PEMEX could pull that crap because it is essentially a branch of the Mexican government; I think they claimed sovereign immunity. BP can't do that; mere corporations don't get sovereignty.

[isleburroughs.livejournal.com]

I wonder if they could stick something in it to plug it. Something that absorbs oil and will harden in sea water. Just plug the fracken thing for crying out loud.

Poor birdies, fishes and cetaceans etc.

:o(

[k-kinnison.livejournal.com]

There is actually some reports that say areas near the sleeve are leaking oil which might explain we got a mantel crack that the oil has found its way to the surface of the floor. This likely caused by all the water, and thousands of feet of rock above the oil reservoir causing the the leaking/spillage/seepage

a more elegant and simple solution is to nuke the site to collapse any holes. The Russians did it... but met with limited success.

Relief wells are a last ditch effort before they go nuclear IMHO

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

If by "more elegant and simple" you mean "bugshit insane".

Five things: first the Russian examples were all on land, which simplifies the problem immensely. Two, 33% of the time it failed. Three, no one has ever detonated a nuke at that depth and so we're not sure what exactly would happen. Four, getting a nuke down below the seabed would mean drilling a larger hole at greater depth than anyone has ever attempted before. And five: there's a small problem with an international treaty the US is signatory to concerning nuclear explosions.

[k-kinnison.livejournal.com]

I never said it was a GOOD idea. What is more simple then boom? What is more simple then slamming two rocks together to create an explosion (Okay that last bit is a REALLY simplified explanation on how a nuclear bomb is detonated) But it seems a better and simpler idea then a 5000' long vacuum tube and the associated logistics

and I could cite numerous examples in the last 10 years where the US has violated or outright ignored international treaties.

You dont know me well enough to understand a lot of things I say or do is just for sheer humor

The problem with your solution

[saintonge.livejournal.com]

As others have pointed out, the water mixed with the oil will freeze. What is needed is some way to heat the stuff as it comes up. This would probably require a small, onsite nuclear reactor.