Humour... Above your head, I know.
@Ceili,
Humour or just a stupid attack on Obama?
@BillRM,
Actually, I like the man. I would have voted for him, but I couldn't. Go **** on someone else.
@Ceili,
You mean you are not one of the right wing nuts on this system?
@BillRM,
Running a bit behind times, Bill.
The ocean pressure at 5,000 ft depth is 2236.52 psi or 152.186 atmospheres.
http://www.calctool.org/CALC/other/games/depth_press
@BillRM,
The pressure can be calculated in a rough sense....what is the depth of the oil in the rock ? It must be holding that weight of rock so its pressure can be calculated plus with a bit of fudging for the weight of water above the rock, and I would be surprised if it was under 6,000 psi.
Put a big condom on the pipe. It has worked for centuries to avoid pregnancy.
BBB
@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:Linkat wrote:I just thought of a cheap simple way - just throw a lighted match onto it.
Doesn't work, it won't stay lit long enough to burn off a significant amount,
and doesn't do anything for the plumes under the water.
Cycloptichorn
you use waterproof matches
@Cycloptichorn,
this is just the clean up part - the choose is and/or...if it wouldn't stay light use a flame thrower.
@edgarblythe,
I'm glad your name isn't Patsy Darlene too.
I understand BP is going to going to drill a couple of off-set wells which stop the flow. Being brought up in the Texas Oil Patch and having a dad who was a welding contractor in the oil fields this is standard procedure in killing a fire, et al.
@Sglass,
Yeah, we know about that. Which would be a wonderful thing if it did not take a long time to accomplish. I for one do not think they ought to quit drilling new wells out there. The government needs first to regulate how it's done is the thing. If they do their job, big oil will then be forced to do their job.
NPR report
Capping out-of-control oil wells and snuffing gas leaks has been a challenge since humans began tapping underground energy resources.
Robots a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico positioned a "top hat" device over the main pipe on the leaking BP well Thursday night. But it was unclear how much oil could be captured by this latest attempt.
How to stop the oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico?
The Soviets nuked several out-of-control gas wells, according to reports. In the Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan, a fire has raged for nearly 40 years after a drilling rig ignited underground gas. And in some places on earth, leaking and oozing oil has been blithely ignored for decades.
Here are some examples of oil and gas blowouts around the world that have produced strange results " and equally strange efforts to fix them:
Algeria, 1961 " The Devil's Cigarette Lighter
This gas well blowout in the eastern Algerian desert produced a whoosh of flame 800 feet high that roared for six months. The force of the gas coming out of the ground was so great that workers who got too close risked being sucked up in the column of flame.
The flare was so big that American astronaut John Glenn could see it as his space capsule orbited over the Sahara Desert.
The fire was finally put out by a fire-fighting team led by Red Adair, an expert from Texas, who used a charge of nitroglycerin to blow it out. The feat brought him world-wide fame. A 1968 movie called Hellfighters, with John Wayne in the leading role, was loosely based on Adair's exploits.
Soviet Union, 1966-72 " The Nuclear Option
News reports from Russia say the Soviets used atom bombs to seal off oil and gas blowouts. The Russian newspaper Komsomol Pravda says a nuclear blast was first used in 1966, to put out a gas well fire in Uzbekistan. The explosion supposedly crushed the leaking well under tons of earth.
Recent news reports quoted Russian scientists suggesting that an underwater nuclear blast could be used effectively to seal off BP's Deepwater Horizon well.
Turkmenistan, 1971 " The Gates of Hell
For nearly 40 years, a crater in the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan (watch this video) has blazed with flames fed by an underground reservoir of gas. The pit, more than 60 yards wide and 20 deep, was created when the ground caved in beneath a drilling rig. The pit filled with methane gas, which Soviet geologists tried to burn off, thus igniting a blaze that no one has yet managed to put out.
For decades, oil has spilled from pipelines and rigs in Nigeria's Niger Delta on a scale dwarfing the BP oil disaster that is fouling the Gulf of Mexico. In this 2005 file photo, people evacuate their homes by boat, passing smoke and flames billowing from a burning oil pipeline belonging to the Shell Petroleum Development Co.
For decades, oil has spilled from pipelines and rigs in Nigeria's Niger Delta on a scale dwarfing the BP oil disaster that is fouling the Gulf of Mexico. In this 2005 file photo, people evacuate their homes by boat, passing smoke and flames billowing from a burning oil pipeline belonging to the Shell Petroleum Development Co.
The pit has become a minor tourist attraction for travelers in that remote part of the world.
Nigeria, 1970s-present " The Delta
Over the decades, aging and ill-maintained pipelines in the Niger Delta of Nigeria have been estimated to spill more than the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. It's a slow-moving disaster (read this article from National Geographic magazine) that local people say is poisoning drinking water and ruining fisheries and farmland.
Oil companies say many spills are caused by insurgents or thieves who cut the pipelines. They say insurgent violence has kept them from doing normal cleanups when spills occur.
Russia, 1970s-present " The Arctic
Like Nigeria, the former Soviet Union has a system of aging and ill-maintained oil pipelines and other facilities inherited from the former Soviet Union.
One incident in 1994 spilled more than 2 million barrels of oil onto the tundra in the Komi region of north Russia. The spilled oil was contained by a dike that later collapsed, allowing oil to flow into nearby rivers.
Russia's state-owned oil company claimed the spill was far smaller than reported by the Western media, and said it was cleaned up. Greenpeace called the environmental damage "irreparable."
@edgarblythe,
Let see this was the first bad outcome in the Gulf in 20 years or so and we will ruin many tens of thousands of families by so doing this ban and greatly increased the overall economic hit that this area is taking now.
And all this is to reduce real risks or is it instead to generate good sound bytes?
There was a chap in the pub tonight, an Inland Revenue inspector no less, not your common or garden mole catcher or snow shoveller, who was telling the company gathered around the John Smith's Extra Smooth dispenser, so ably attended by our sweet Charlotte, who can cause necks to extend just by getting a glass off the bootom shelf, that the spill of oil under consideration here is not in the top 50 of similar events around the world.
I hope this is not true. If it is it would mean that American eyeballs have become glued fast to American navels.
Tell me it isn't true. He was adamant about it. He had read it on the Internet.
Those of you getting emotional about the bird that got covered in oil should avoid reading any details about the US poultry production statistics.
@BillRM,
Quote:Let see this was the first bad outcome in the Gulf in 20 years or so and we will ruin many tens of thousands of families by so doing this ban and greatly increased the overall economic hit that this area is taking now.
Never heard of Hurricanes ? Earthquakes ? Poor reaction to those events is a man made disaster following a natural one.
With the number of oil disasters that occur why isnt there a purpose built ship to skim the oil, seperate it from the water and pipe it to tankers ? Even one stationed in the Pacific could have got to the gulf spill by now, if it existed.
Oil companies should pay a tax on what they get out of the ground, not a tax on profits. That way if they waste the oil it hurts them far more than it does now.
