Backstop on May 30, 2010 - 12:56am-Practical Proposals
With some trepidation I'm writing to gently point out that the experts, and the professionals too, seem somewhat at a loss as to what to do for the best about this rogue well, with its unique wreckage and exceptional outflows, sea depth, dispersant downflows, negligence, mendacity, financial stakes, ecology, fisheries, hurricane prospects, political sensitivity, and media coverage, all in the mix. Added to which, Peak Oil is looming up.
Such are the connotations of this thoroughly oiled sort of swan that at least one prominent figure (a former Bush advisor whom it might be crass to name) appears to have gone clean out of his mind with the additional stress.
Given that no visible consensus as to engineering solutions has arisen in over a month, perhaps it is time to look at what might attract agreement and then fashion it into a practical proposal ?
To this end, I'd suggest that it would be imprudent to alter the chaotic wreckage for any connection-based control option without first having deployed a containment-based control option for immediate positioning in the event of any failure that risked increasing the outflow.
The likelyhood of incompetence yielding such a failure is perhaps best illustrated by NASA's problems when someone confused miles and kilometres. The probe reached mars ok, but rather than settling gently into position to start its work, it went splat into the planet. Way to go!
Given that the business plans of even the world's most powerful corporations are grossly unsustainable, which is but incompetence on a grand scale, the probability of further failure, arising somewhere between Haywood and his working minions on site, looks rather nearer to one than zero.
Whether the idea of a containment option may find agreement here on TOD depends on our confidence in the best form of containment that we as a fraternity could devise. Having looked at the parameters for a month there seem to be various distinct requirements that must be met, any one of which may be insuperable.
- Given that oil extraction isn't my field, it is for others to explain and if possible resolve any problems they see.
1/. Ballast must be delivered by chute around the wellhead to provide a stable foundation for the container, (perhaps after the removal of soft silt ?).
2/. The container must be made double skinned and topped with an ample outflow pipe and stopcock, and be large enough to easily accomodate the BOP. Within its heavy framing its inner skin needs to help sweep out any hydrates and so should be conical. Its heavy duty outer skin of marine s/steel must be domed to withstand the delivery of stabilization ballast by wide chute from 5,000 feet. While the two skins are joined onto framing round the outflow pipe, there is no floor between their bottom edges. Connections for hoses for liquid concrete delivery are set around the outflow pipe.
3/. Sufficient barges to deliver say 250,000 Ts of ballast to the site need to be commandeered, emptied, loaded with ballast and sailed to nearby harbours to await orders. Custom-rigged barges able to provide say 10,000Ts of concrete need to be similarly positioned.
4/. Prior to any connection-based option being attempted, the barge fleet and the container's barge are anchored on site, and the container is positioned near the wellhead, with its stopcock fully open and concrete hoses attached.
5/. On the order to deploy the container, the ROVs are used to set cutting charges on all pipework from the BOP and around the site. Once cut away, the wreckage is towed clear and further ballast laid as required. The container is lowered over the BOP to rest on its pad of ballast.
6/. The double skin is immediately filled with concrete which flows onto the pad providing a seal at the container's edges. Ballast is chuted down to bury it to around 3/4ths height, before building a base to that height over a wide radius. The concrete hoses are removed and a concrete pad is laid around the outflow.
7/. Once the concrete has begun to cure, the stopcock is closed, very slowly. It and the outflow pipe are then deeply buried under concrete, before the many remaining barge-loads of ballast are delivered to form a very large mound. An ROV is permanently stationed to patrol the mound on a daily basis, for at least the next decade.
8/. Send the bill to BP. ___________________________________________
Starting with seabed issues, I've both unknowns and uncertainties about the design and deployment sequence sketched above. What seems certain is that neither waiting for the secondary wells nor altering the wreckage to make connections without a plan B seem remotely viable options.
Thus it seems there are now two prime questions to address: - What is the best containment option that could be deployed ? - What are the prospects of deploying a reliable containment not as the 'backstop' capacity, but as a distinctly preferable option to attempting an engineered connection to a malfunctioning BOP ?
Hoping these may at least be regarded as fair questions from a layman,
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