What gets me about the Gulf oil leak is that they seem to have not planned ahead for what would be a remedy for this situation. They seem to have done no testing at this depth, and are just trying possible remedies on a guess as to whether they would work or which would more likely work, or maybe trying those which worked for wells less deep, but were never tested at this depth.
I don't think it would have required an actual leak to do testing.
I think the pres of BP admitted there had been "not enough planning".
I guess the engineers did finally get a smaller pipe inserted into the drill pipe to get some/most of the oil. I wonder if they have some sort of expander on it to seal up between the two pipes.
Oh, yeah, like an expandable plug. The thing my SIL's company (toxic waste disposal/containment) suggested to BP about 5 hours after the spill. They have one, offered it, no reply. Typical.
60 Minutes just had an excellent piece (a rarity for them these days) about the fubar in question. One of the people interviewed was a university engineering professor that previously was the lead guru on several other 'when things go wrong' investigations, including several on offshore oil rigs. Apparently they did have redundant safety measures in place, but kept on trucking when some critical ones were known to be questionable, reducing their margin to zilch. They were trying a quick-and-dirty procedure to cap the well, to save money and time, when it all went wrong. Another case of multiple subs on the same site not following the same procedures and precautions. The professor's description reminded me a lot of the Shuttle fubars- little things, that would have been survivable by themselves, creating a situation where catastrophic failure occurred.
Also reminded me of the shuttle where the grunts told the PTB that something might be wrong but the PTB got cocky and thougt they knew best. On the second shuttle accident there was discussion of problems almost from the getgo including some suggestions to use the space station and other cameras to see if they could find any damage. Dont know if that would have saved them, but it certainly couldn't hurt.
As I recall, it was far worse than that. The engineers from the booster manufacturer had data that showed seals had come close to failing in previous launches and the worst erosion occured during the coldest weather, which was attributed to the seals being shrunk and stiff. They told them to launch it was unsafe, but were overruled by managment that was under pressure from NASA to get it launched on that cold day. It sounded to me like a good case for criminal negligence could have been made.
Yes, especially since they had another shuttle that while not ready for immediate launch, likely could have been made ready in time with an all out effort. Also, despite knowing that debris had broken off and struck the shuttle on launch many times, they never did any testing to try to quantify how much damage it might be causing. That testing was only done AFTER the disaster.
There are a lot of accidents that would have been difficult to predict or prevent. The shuttle ones were not. And I suspect when the investigation is concluded in the BP oil leak, the same will be true there. But, I must be careful. We have some oil field experts here who feel unless you have worked on a rig, you should not comment.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.