Creative ideas to clean up and/or stop the oil spill

Summon all oil tank ships to the area and have them soak up the oil via special
vacuum.

To close-up the leak, drill next to the existing hole and insert a huge flexible pipe
to divert the oil into new channels.

Currently, the well is emptying at a pressure of 9,000 pounds per square inch (psi). The pressure of the water at 5,000 feet is counteracting that pressure and bringing the flow pressure at the wellhead to 3,500 psi. For comparison, a crocodile's bite is measured at 5,000 psi.

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Currently, the well is emptying at a pressure of 9,000 pounds per square inch (psi). The pressure of the water at 5,000 feet is counteracting that pressure and bringing the flow pressure at the wellhead to 3,500 psi. For comparison, a crocodile's bite is measured at 5,000 psi.

Ok, given by doing simple math that the person who wrote this is claiming that the pressure at 5,000 feet is 9000-3500 or 5,500 PSI and it is in fact nearer to 2400 PSI one would be safe in assuming that the writer have no clue at all and the 9,000 figure can not be given any credit.

You are free to dispute whatever numbers you like.

For comparison, a crocodile's bite is measured at 5,000 psi.

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You are free to dispute whatever numbers you like.

The number for the oil pressure is in a story that contain another very large pressure error right by it and quoted no one at all as a prime source for that figure of 9000 PSI it came out of the thin air of the Christian Monitor article.

The last I look that is not a paper with any expertise in the oil or drilling fields in house.

So please explain why anyone would or should give it any credit at all?

I don't understand why you couldn't have a giant cone-shaped funnel, that works to contain the oil in a limited area after it's come out of the leak; and then clarify the water in that limited area as soon as possible. You could probably even recover a lot of the oil.

Cycloptichorn

I was thinking why not make a clyndrical barrier wall around the immediate area, and boats above could keep pumping it out.

Suffice it to say that the oil is spewing out at a high enough pressure, that simply dropping a ton of fill on top of it isn't going to do the job.

Now once more where the hell is Farmerman when you need him????

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I was thinking why not make a clyndrical barrier wall around the immediate area, and boats above could keep pumping it out.

Where to? Cuba maybe. Or Mexico.

And I was stating a few thousand tons of fill not a few tons of fill and if a pipe can contain the pressure whatever the hell it is then a few thousands tons of fill should be able to also.

No, it won't - without internal rigidity, the force of the outflow will carve through that fill like butter. The 'thousands of tons' of force are spread amongst the huge surface area of that fill; it doesn't provide much force to any one specific point.